Despite Jacobson’s efforts to persuade us that Cooper’s ideas influence American politics and culture in meaningful ways,...
A biography of Milton William Cooper (1943-2001), who inspired conspiracy cells through print publications and his radio broadcasts.
As New York magazine contributing editor Jacobson (The Lampshade: A Holocaust Detective Story from Buchenwald to New Orleans, 2010, etc.) writes, Cooper’s most widely read book, Behold a Pale Horse (1991), had existed on the edge of his consciousness for many years, as had Cooper’s radio show The Hour of the Time. Before Cooper died in a shootout with law enforcement agents at his Arizona home in 2001, Jacobson never thought to interview the conspiracist, who had developed a cult following. Eventually, though, for reasons Jacobson cannot pinpoint, he felt the call to research Cooper’s life and legacy. The author found plenty of living sources, including former wives, children, acolytes, supporters, and detractors. In addition, the author listened to hours of Cooper’s broadcasts and read millions of published words. Ultimately, given Cooper’s viewpoints and work, writing this biography must have been a difficult task; he presented as fact much that can never be proven, based to some extent on information he claims to have absorbed while in the military during the Vietnam War. Depending on the reader’s point of view on human nature, Cooper will come off as either sincere about the supposedly factual conspiracies he presented or be labeled a paranoid autodidact. What many readers will conclude: On topics from UFOs to “solving” the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Cooper reached conclusions in a fevered mind and then bent information to fit the conclusions. A temperamental man who drank heavily, assaulted at least some of his wives, lost contact with most of his children, Cooper emerges from these pages as a thoroughly unpleasant, unhappy man.
Despite Jacobson’s efforts to persuade us that Cooper’s ideas influence American politics and culture in meaningful ways, the biography seems like a lot of effort for little payoff.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-16995-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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