In this biography, author Michael explores the twin questions of who was truly America’s first president and why has he been forgotten?
Born in 1715, the aristocratic John Hanson grew up on a tobacco plantation located (ironically) near the Mount Vernon estate now revered as George Washington’s residence. Michael readily acknowledges that he is a Hanson family descendant but avoids hagiography, frequently scolding Hanson (and other Founding Fathers) for owning slaves. In 1781, the Continental Congress unanimously elected Hanson president of America’s first government—eight years before Washington took the helm of the country’s first constitutional government. Previously, Hanson was the first state legislator to argue for independence, and the first to enlist militias for the Revolutionary War—which he helped finance. During his one-year presidency, Hanson decreed July 4th as Independence Day and the last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving. He also launched the Postal Service, the census and the custom of presidential portraiture. And yet, not only is Hanson unknown to most Americans, his probable grave site has been paved over. Michael believes that Hanson is overlooked, in part, because the nation’s first government was designed to be weak, and because many of Hanson’s diaries and personal effects have been lost. But he also builds a persuasive argument that 20th-century historians deserve a share of the blame, singling out (but not naming) presidential historians as “the handmaidens of American amnesia.” He also calls out and identifies websites, particularly Wikipedia, which routinely post gross inaccuracies about Hanson. Stylistically similar to a monograph, Michael’s narrative presents, and all too-often repeats, a torrent of information in fine detail. But this is the first comprehensive biography of “the most forgotten major figure in American history,” and reading this volume is nothing if not enriching. An unrefined but rich trove of information about a major historical figure who has largely been forgotten.
Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2012
ISBN: 978-1467958066
Page Count: 452
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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