A mixed bag but of interest to health policy wonks and activists.
A scion of an American dynasty recounts years of addiction, mental illness, and family dysfunction—matters that, as the title suggests, are altogether too ordinary.
Kennedy, son of Ted, is probably best known today for crashing his car into a barricade in front of his workplace under the influence of medication. This memoir opens with that event, promising, “I’m never going to remember what actually happened that night in early May of 2006 when I slammed my green Mustang into the police barrier in front of the US Capitol.” The sentence is diagnostic, both mechanically and materially, of the narrative that follows: awkward, sometimes evasive, with good thoughts clunkily expressed. Why a green Mustang? That detail is less important than the multihued pills that punctuate the narrative. We sympathize with Kennedy when we learn that illnesses such as bipolar disorder fall into a category of things that members of the clan are supposed to face stoically, without making a fuss: “I grew up,” he writes, “among people who were geniuses at not talking about things.” Effectively shut out by his father as an embarrassing reminder of weakness, Kennedy squeaked by with a narrow electoral victory to become a U.S. representative, continuing a legacy of public service—and, sad to say, a history of drug and alcohol abuse. A quarter of Americans have a similar story, by Kennedy’s account. While’s there’s some special pleading involved—“My father would have been President of the United States if there had been progressive mental health treatment for him,” he insists—much of the narrative is given over to plainspoken advocacy for mental health initiatives, some enacted into law thanks to his persistent efforts. That account goes on too long, but it makes for a useful look at the politics underlying public health; to trust Kennedy’s anecdotes, it’s amazing that anything under that rubric gets done at all.
A mixed bag but of interest to health policy wonks and activists.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-399-17332-5
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2015
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
