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HEART OF A PATRIOT

HOW I FOUND THE COURAGE TO SURVIVE VIETNAM, WALTER REED AND KARL ROVE

An inspiring life story of special interest to those suffering from depression, a “cancer of the soul.”

A former U.S. senator recounts his recovery from the scars of war, politics and depression.

Following the attacks of 9/11, the onset of the Iraq war and the loss of his senate seat in 2002, Cleland (Going for the Max!, 2000, etc.), “awash in all the old sensations of war,” descended into a two-and-a-half-year depression. He suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, as events conspired to nearly replicate the effect of his combat experience in Vietnam, where an exploding grenade left him a triple amputee. The son of a Navy veteran, a star at his small Georgia high school and a graduate of Stetson University, whose semester in Washington program cemented his interest in government and politics, Cleland managed to put together an outstanding public-service career after his return from war. He was the youngest chief and first Vietnam veteran to head the Veterans Administration and became a U.S. senator in 1996—the author acknowledges that holding these positions gave him confidence and purpose, a way to cope with life after Vietnam. The loss of public office and a new war—one his senate vote, much to his regret, helped authorize—plunged him back into the darkness of loss: “lost legs, lost arm, lost youth, lost innocence, lost war.” Cleland’s at his best discussing his early life, and he offers moving discussions of his combat and his excruciating rehabilitation and fight against his anxiety disorder. When it comes to politics, however, he’s far less convincing, too loosely expanding his theme of courage to political acts—members of Congress singing “God Bless America” on the Capitol steps after 9/11, Vermont Sen. Jeffords’s party switch from Republican to independent—that hardly match the valor required of grievously wounded vets like Cleland himself.

An inspiring life story of special interest to those suffering from depression, a “cancer of the soul.”

Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2009

ISBN: 978-1-4391-2605-9

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2009

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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

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