A timely biography presenting a valuable counterbalance to the current enthusiasm for Hamilton.
Feldman (Law/Harvard Univ.; Cool War: The Future of Global Competition, 2013, etc.) returns with a substantial biography of our fourth president.
The title's "three lives" refer to distinct phases in the career of James Madison (1751-1836). He appears first as the primary architect of the Constitution at the Philadelphia convention in 1787 and a major proponent of its ratification, accomplishments which alone would have cemented his place in history. There followed a bleak period leading the opposition in the House of Representatives during the Federalist ascendancy in the 1790s. Finally, Madison returned to executive power as Thomas Jefferson's secretary of state and then as president. Introverted and bookish, Madison was inclined to grand political theories and a naïve expectation that people and nations would act rationally. He crafted a political system intended to accommodate the clash of disagreement while maintaining personal amity, and he went to great lengths to maintain friendships with his opponents. Ironically, he nevertheless became a leading partisan in a system he had designed to render parties unnecessary, and he began the unfortunate practice of labeling policies he disagreed with as unconstitutional, leading to breaks with former friends George Washington and Alexander Hamilton. Feldman's scholarly yet accessible account emphasizes the evolution of Madison's views on the Constitution and his hard-earned flexibility as well as the maturation of his viewpoints and skills as he learned to adapt pure theories of government to political realities and then to make public virtues of the practical necessities. The richly detailed narrative, while occasionally lacking fire, is suitable for general readers; Feldman's presentation of Madison's adventures when the British burned the capital in 1814 is particularly rousing. The author skates over some setbacks and controversial decisions, like the rejection of a British armistice offer early in the War of 1812, and makes a brave job of harmonizing Madison's lifelong devotion to personal liberty with his status as a slaveholder.
A timely biography presenting a valuable counterbalance to the current enthusiasm for Hamilton.Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9275-5
Page Count: 800
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
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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