Read this book for the portrait of Benedict Arnold. The tales of the two Revolutionary-era women leave a great deal to be...
Stuart (The Muse of the Revolution: The Secret Pen of Mercy Otis Warren and the Founding of a Nation, 2008, etc.) draws on her long experience writing about women and social history to show that strong women have always driven their husbands to perform prominent actions, both good and bad.
Peggy Shippen and Lucy Flucker were socialites who married two Revolutionary War heroes and immediately became parts of their careers. Flucker’s love for Henry Knox saw her following him throughout the war to whatever part of the country he was assigned. He was always able to find her and their children comfortable housing, where she hosted legendary dinner parties. Flucker’s correspondence with Henry shows a loving couple who longed for each other when separated—though it’s not terribly enticing reading. Nor are the tales of their extravagances and scrambles for means. The real story in this book is that of Benedict Arnold, his bravery and heroism, his permanent lameness suffered in battle, and his imperious demands for honor and recognition. It is that sense of entitlement that drove Arnold, with no little egging on by Shippen, to turn his coat. He felt that, since he was passed over for advancement, he had little to lose by defection. Shippen’s close social ties to the British Maj. John André facilitated Arnold’s treachery. Stuart notes a number of incidents in which Arnold’s private use and sale of government equipment cast a distinct pall over his reputation. Too much of the book is then devoted to the Arnolds’ life in England, his attempts at making his fortune and her social successes.
Read this book for the portrait of Benedict Arnold. The tales of the two Revolutionary-era women leave a great deal to be desired.Pub Date: April 9, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8070-0117-2
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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