The author opens our eyes to a woman who should be a household name.
The first biography of Marie Mattingly Meloney (1878-1943), “a journalist, publicist, social reformer, mother, rainmaker, diplomat, political operative, and patron of women, the arts and sciences.”
After her father’s death, Missy (as the author refers to her throughout) used her literary and social knowledge to introduce herself into Washington, D.C., society and the sophisticated world of statesmen and men of letters. She began a lifetime of making contacts and went on to have a “public impact [that] reverberated broadly,” writes former history professor Des Jardins (Walter Camp: Football and the Modern Era, 2015, etc.), a board member of the National Women’s History Project. A fall from a horse left Missy with a permanent limp, and her recurring battles with a tubercular lung could have condemned her to a restricted life. However, “she vowed never to be the unavailable convalescent her mother had been.” When the Washington Post published her letter promoting a church, a journalist was born. Not long after, she captured a scoop on Spanish-American War hero George Dewey. Missy delivered not only a story, but also photos and connections to famous neighbors, whom she knew personally. As Des Jardins clearly demonstrates, she never stopped looking beyond the story. In 1900, she went to Colorado to recuperate from a TB attack and returned home as the Denver Post’s Washington correspondent—at age 18. One of Missy’s strengths was her patience. Whether seeking a story, convincing someone to write for her national publication, This Week, or gaining access to the Senate press gallery, she waited, worked, and always succeeded. What she discovered along the way was the strength of women’s ability to accomplish things through contacts and friendships. Without the vote, titles, or positions, one could still master the art of influence. Missy’s network extended across Europe and America and the political and intellectual spectrums. Marie Curie, Eleanor Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, and Lou and Herbert Hoover are only some of the people whose lives she affected. Her accomplishments were vast, and Des Jardins capably brings them to light.
The author opens our eyes to a woman who should be a household name.Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5416-4549-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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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