The book flows easily from one quest to the next, always delivering unbiased information supported by well-researched facts.
Readers may not recognize the author’s name, but he has been fighting for the rights of underdogs for nearly 60 years. His autobiography describes his entry into the world of political activism with the modesty often found in those who overachieve.
During his days at Brooklyn Law School in the 1940s, Lane (Last Word: My Indictment of the CIA in the Murder of JFK, 2011, etc.) began his fight for the rights of the voiceless. He became the student leader of the National Lawyers Guild, a society formed in answer to the American Bar Association’s conservative, occasionally racist policies. After admission to the bar, Lane’s life as an activist took off as one pro bono case after another introduced him to all the main players of the period. He dined with W.E.B. Du Bois, invited blacklisted Pete Seeger to play at a fundraiser, fought the House Un-American Activities Committee and led the effort to clean up the draconian policies of the Wassaic State School for Mental Defectives. Lane ran for and was elected to the New York State Assembly in order to open the door for minorities, and the reputation he built introduced him to many of the movers and shakers of the late 20th century: Eleanor Roosevelt, John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Dick Gregory, William F. Buckley, Jane Fonda, Bertrand Russell, among others. He worked with anyone struggling for a voice, from the Vietnam Veterans Against the War to the Black Panthers. He rode as a Freedom Rider, worked for JFK and then wrote Rush to Judgment (1966) to exonerate Lee Harvey Oswald. As one would expect of a person of this caliber, Lane’s story focuses on the needs of those he served rather than the extraordinary part he played in so many lives.
The book flows easily from one quest to the next, always delivering unbiased information supported by well-researched facts.Pub Date: June 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-61374-001-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Lawrence Hill Books/Chicago Review
Review Posted Online: March 18, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
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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