A haunting evocation of the fire-and-ice political partnership between Robert and John F. Kennedy—and of how, despite energy and idealism, the brothers encountered tragedy by blundering into “a trackless wood of ambition and emotion.” Bobby was protector, prod, and conscience to his brother—and, he came to fear later, the unwitting agent of JFK’s assassination, according to Mahoney (JFK: Ordeal in Africa, not reviewed), a former John F. Kennedy Scholar at the Univ. of Massachusetts and the Kennedy Presidential Library. The brothers gave a hint of their later relationship in the 1950s, when Jack coolly served on the McClellan Committee investigating corrupt unions while Bobby, as committee counsel, pursued Jimmy Hoffa. While Jack provided the savoir faire, Bobby supplied the moral passion and energy. The brothers shared a disregard for risks that they inherited from father Joe—who, Mahoney alleges, secured the Mafia’s financial support and vote-getting strength in Chicago at a crucial juncture in the 1960 presidential campaign. But as attorney general, Bobby launched an assault on the underworld, hoping not only “to rid the country of its pernicious influence, but also to sever its connection to the Kennedy family,” in Mahoney’s words. Compounding the Mob’s rage was the fact that the administration was simultaneously employing kingpins like Johnny Rosselli in Operation Mongoose against Fidel Castro. Mahoney has assiduously plumbed a host of sources to re-create the web of circumstance that put the Kennedys in the sights of their enemies (who also numbered J. Edgar Hoover and, after the Cuban missile crisis, anti-Castro rebels). But he’s particularly eloquent in depicting the later Bobby: suspicious that the CIA or its minions had killed his brother, then redirecting his crusading energies away from the personal vendettas that may have boomeranged against Jack and toward impassioned advocacy of blacks, migrant workers, Native Americans, and anyone at the margins of society. A graceful dual biography that demonstrates why the questions lingering after their murders are as enduring as the Kennedys” magic.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-55970-480-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1999
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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