A solid overview for general readers.
Prizewinning journalist and Fox News political analyst Williams (Muzzled: The Assault on Honest Debate, 2011, etc.) identifies more than two dozen individuals who helped shape modern America.
In brightly written chapters detailing the lives and actions of “great men and women who forged the nation we have today,” the author traces extraordinary changes of the 20th century that would have shocked the Founding Fathers, who lived in a smaller, far different society. Members of the new “founding family,” as he calls these modern change-makers, include jurists Earl Warren and Thurgood Marshall (racial equality), economist Milton Friedman (free markets), builders Robert Moses and William Levitt (the urban and suburban landscapes), George Meany (labor), Billy Graham (the Christian right), and Henry Kissinger (diplomacy). Some sparked social-change movements through books, such as Betty Friedan (The Feminine Mystique) and Rachel Carson (Silent Spring). Others are little known, like bureaucrat Robert Ball, a longtime Social Security official who redefined and expanded that program to define health care as a fundamental right; and Harry Hay, founder of the first U.S. gay rights group. In each instance, Williams draws on secondary sources to provide a balanced view of people and issues, often noting the “for better or worse” aspects of massive societal changes, such as the rise of the National Rifle Association under actor Charlton Heston. The author’s insistence on comparing modern change-makers to the Founding Fathers, however, is a bit of a stretch. While it allows him to make effective comparisons between American life past and present, it has the effect of elevating many individuals, such as Bill Bratton, father of data-driven policing, and Gen. William Westmoreland, who helped reshape the U.S. military, to company to which they do not belong. Perhaps most interesting is Jack and Ted Kennedy’s work on 1965 immigration reform, which has literally changed the face of America. Notably absent are technology and business figures.
A solid overview for general readers.Pub Date: April 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-307-95204-2
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
