Of much interest to students of political history, and sure to excite discussion in academic circles.
A carefully researched study of a curious, well-hidden episode in American presidential history.
Shortly after the death of his wife Ellen in 1914, newly elected president Woodrow Wilson met and quickly fell in love with society matron Edith Bolling Galt, described by former New York Times reporter and historian Levin as a woman of “opulent figure and commanding air.” Edith, who soon married Wilson, made for an unusually diligent First Lady, studying world events and Wilson's own voluminous writing, and familiarizing herself with the intricacies of party politics. Their pillow talk evidently touched on matters of state as much as anything more personal, as when Wilson “discussed with Edith his apprehensions about the serious effects of [Secretary of State William Jennings] Bryan’s resignation on the country and on his administration” and the wording of his official remarks on the U-boat sinking of the Lusitania. (The two also shared a vigorous loathing for the prospect of women gaining the vote. “Nothing in the course of those tragic years of war,” writes Levin, “seemed personally to repel Edith or Wilson so much as the women activists who picketed for suffrage.”) When, midway through his second term, Wilson suffered a massive stroke, Edith was well up to the task of serving as his proxy—a role that the White House steadfastly denied, insisting that the president was merely unwell, and remained fully in control. Edith kept up her side of the ruse, but, imperious and fiercely loyal, she also managed to alienate politicians already opposed to Wilson's programs, chief among them Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. Had Wilson ceded control to the vice president instead of retaining it through his wife, Levin suggests, then he might have been successful in gaining support for the League of Nations instead of enduring a disastrous political defeat.
Of much interest to students of political history, and sure to excite discussion in academic circles.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2001
ISBN: 0-7432-1158-8
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2001
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
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