Historians will wince at some of the hyperbole and speculative conclusions, but Kennedy junkies will gobble it up.
First of a projected two volumes, pulling together in sometimes mind-numbing detail the lives of the men in a family that dominated the American imagination during the last half of the 20th century.
Leamer (The Kennedy Women, 1994, etc.) offers a relatively evenhanded although ultimately admiring examination of the relationships among Joseph Kennedy and his four sons: Joe Jr. (WWII hero, killed in action), Jack (president, assassinated), Bobby (attorney general and senator from New York, assassinated) and Teddy (baby of the family and longtime senator from Massachusetts, plagued by scandal). All the old questions are here, but so are the old answers, albeit amplified with new documents and interviews. Did Joe Sr. make money from bootlegging liquor? Probably. Did he buy his son Jack the presidency? Not really, although he certainly spent a lot of money and called in many favors. Was Jack the swordsman that he was reputed to be? Even more so. Not exactly breaking news, but by bundling the lives of the Kennedy men together and emphasizing family influences, Leamer is able to clarify some of the seeming contradictions in their personal and political acts. For instance, Joe Sr. single-mindedly groomed his sons for public lives, but he was also a loving and supportive father. President Kennedy admired nothing more than physical and moral courage, but often waffled on taking a stand if the political stakes were high. Attorney General Kennedy’s sometimes vicious handling of colleagues on behalf of his brother contrasted with his real concern for the suffering of other human beings. In the survey of JFK’s presidency, the Cuba crises and the so-called mob connections receive a considerable share of attention, the civil-rights movement perhaps not as much as it deserves. This hefty tome ends with JFK’s funeral, with much of Bob and Ted’s stories still to come.
Historians will wince at some of the hyperbole and speculative conclusions, but Kennedy junkies will gobble it up.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2001
ISBN: 0-688-16315-7
Page Count: 880
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2001
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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