Focusing on two Civil War heroes who commanded opposing regiments at Gettysburg, this dual biography forges an expansive, dramatic, highly readable history of the generation that came of age during that fateful conflict. Perry, who writes about history and military and foreign affairs (A Fire in Zion: How the Israelis and the Palestinians Made Peace, 1994, etc.), chooses his subjects well. Chamberlain, a devout and introspective Maine college professor, and Oates, a brawling Alabama roustabout, waged the battle for Little Round Top—``the single most important struggle of the single most important battle of America's most important and bloodiest war.'' Despite obvious differences in character, remarkable similarities mark the separate paths that crossed briefly at Gettysburg. Both were self-made men forced by family hardship to provide their own educations; both rode their war records to political office, serving as governors of their respective states; both failed to achieve their highest political ambitions—to serve in the US Senate. The experience of Oates, especially, illustrates the fluctuating fortunes of each side during the long conflict. He fought in nearly every prominent battle of the eastern campaign, from the highs of Stonewall Jackson's stunning Shenandoah Valley victories to the fateful Gettysburg defeat, where his failure to capture Little Round Top is posited as the war's turning point. Perry examines deeply the prevailing trends that shaped the politics of Oates and Chamberlain before the war (a survey that describes the rise of charismatic religion, the beginning of abolitionism, the antebellum movements for women's rights and temperance) and the politics of Reconstruction, which both men helped shape after it. Just when historical sideroads and blow-by-blow battle depictions threaten to swamp readers, Perry veers back to Oates and Chamberlain, the twin Everymen of his satisfying, wide-lens perspective on history. (16 b&w photos not seen) (History Book Club main selection; author tour)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-670-86225-8
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1997
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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