A misguided focus on sex and booze overshadows the moments of insight and inspiration.
A memoir of one young woman’s experience working as Ralph Reed’s spokeswoman.
This should be a fascinating book. After all, it describes Baron’s time as a single young socially moderate Jew working for Reed, the former director of the Christian Coalition, during a time when he was still politically powerful. The author seems to be counting on her readers to experience a certain amount of excitement from the revelation that Reed’s spokeswoman during this period was a sexually active lush. However, given the long list of prominent conservatives who have been caught doing much worse, her activities seem almost quaint. Though Baron claims that she “bares all,” most of what she shares is mundane: friendships with co-workers, relationship with her family, eventual marriage, nights spent getting drunk, casual sexual encounters. There are moments of real interest here—her description of making the leap from envelope-stuffing volunteer to the press room (by stepping past a temporary partition and commandeering a plant stand as a desk) show a glimpse of a plucky and smart young woman—and she offers a unique insider perspective on Reed’s reaction to the Abramoff scandal. The most shocking claim Baron makes may be the veiled suggestion, toward the end of the book, that Reed did, in fact, have a hand in those rumors about John McCain’s daughter in the 2000 South Carolina primary. Unfortunately, it seems the author decided that the nitty-gritty of real political work was less interesting than her love of vodka and grapefruit juice.
A misguided focus on sex and booze overshadows the moments of insight and inspiration.Pub Date: July 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8065-3415-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Citadel/Kensington
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
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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