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THATCHER'S TRIAL

Name: THATCHER'S TRIAL
Author: Kwasi Kwarteng
ISBN: 978-1-61039-562-5

180 DAYS THAT CREATED A CONSERVATIVE ICON

by Kwasi Kwarteng ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 3, 2015

Readers on this side of the pond who are puzzled by the impassioned esteem and disdain in which Thatcher is held in Britain...

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Britain’s storied Iron Lady comes in for a largely positive but not uncritical reassessment from a Conservative Member of Parliament.

Kwarteng (War and Gold: A Five-Hundred-Year History of Empires, Adventures, and Debt, 2014, etc.), who represents the historically conservative constituency of Spelthorne, may offend one or two die-hard admirers of Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013) with his careful qualifications: yes, she was a true-blue scourger of socialism and the welfare state, but she was defined by a largely negative program of what she was against. Yes, she had strongly held beliefs and remained true to her cause, but she was doctrinaire and an ideologue. More than anything else, she had an “almost preternatural ability to divide opinion,” such that few were undecided or neutral on the matter of Margaret Thatcher. Much of Kwarteng’s look at the end of Thatcher’s first term in office is a balanced assessment. She was, more than any other prime minister in modern British history, open to discussion and even dissent on the part of her Cabinet, and she thrived on confrontation and debate—“provided, of course, that she prevailed.” Occasionally, the author gives away more than he intends to: Thatcher, he writes, was a radical from the beginning, and her “quasi-revolutionary fervor” was deeply shocking to the established order on both left and right. One senses mild disapproval though not disavowal on Kwarteng’s part as he steers the narrative through purges of that Cabinet and the government, union-busting and strike-breaking, dismantling of various parts of the social safety net, and neo-imperialist adventuring—all of which took place in the last part of 1982 and first part of 1983, when Thatcher would profoundly remake the Conservative Party and be rewarded for it with a sweeping re-election victory.

Readers on this side of the pond who are puzzled by the impassioned esteem and disdain in which Thatcher is held in Britain will find much of value in this short but illuminating study.

Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-61039-562-5

Page Count: 288

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
WAR AND GOLD
by Kwasi Kwarteng

- BOOK REVIEW
GHOSTS OF EMPIRE
by Kwasi Kwarteng

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

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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.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.