67943203.599 Hennessee, Judith BETTY FRIEDAN An exhaustive, readable, forthright biography of the woman who, however truculent she may have been in both personal and political disputes, earned her way as one who launched the second-wave feminist revolution. Journalist Hennessee (coauthor with Dr. Michael Baden of Unnatural Death: Confessions of a Medical Examiner, 1989) makes clear that Betty Friedan, a woman of extraordinary energy and intelligence, was her own worst enemy, “rude and nasty, self-serving and imperious.” But she was also vibrant, focused, and compelling, a combination of qualities that enabled her not only to write The Feminine Mystique (1963) but to spearhead the founding of the National Organization for Women and later, the National Women’s Political Caucus. Born Betty Goldstein in Peoria in 1921 to a prosperous Jewish family, she graduated from Smith College, did a graduate stint at Berkeley, then moved to New York, where she reported for the labor press and married Carl Friedan, her husband for 22 years and father of her three children. This biography closely tracks her personal life, including episodes of domestic violence, divorce, and a long series of lovers. The personal mirrors the political: with Friedan, at home or in a feminist caucus, it was her way or the highway. For instance, Friedan, who liked men (better than she liked women), rejected the thesis put forth by radical members of NOW that patriarchy was “the root of all evil.” She also resisted the growing influx of lesbians into NOW. Soon, Gloria Steinem began to overshadow her—at least with the media—as “superstar of the women’s movement.” A furious Friedan fought back, but when the battle for the Equal Rights Amendment was lost, so was Betty. She turned to international organizing, writing (The Fountain of Age, 1993), teaching, and leading think tanks. Now nearing 80, she is, according to a friend, a “sweeter, calmer, happier person.” Friedan has left such a residue of ill will that many feminists will resist giving her the credit accorded even in this evenhanded treatment; it is nevertheless must reading for feminists and students of those tumultuous times, returning Friedan to her deserved place in “herstory.”(16 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-679-43203-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
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
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