A smart and plainspoken—if sometimes obviously self-serving—insider’s view of the military-industrial-governmental complex....
Former Secretary of Defense Gates doesn’t exactly bare all in this politically charged memoir, but he doesn’t pull many punches, either.
It’s clear, from just the first few pages, that the job of the head civilian administrator of the military (second to the commander in chief, that is, the president) is a thoroughly political one. It becomes clearer, as the tale progresses, that some politicians are more palatable than others. Gates maintains a mostly respectful tone when it comes to the current commander in chief, though it’s quite evident that his views are qualified: In trying to explain the personalities of Afghanistan commander Stanley McChrystal and Iraq commander David Petraeus and their dynamics with President Barack Obama, Gates writes, “my assurances fell pretty much on deaf ears, which I found enormously frustrating and discouraging.” Gates also unleashes on the current Congress: “Uncivil, incompetent in fulfilling basic constitutional responsibilities (such as timely appropriations), micromanagerial, parochial, hypocritical, egotistical, thin-skinned, too often putting self (and reelection) before country.” Pow! The author emerges as a canny administrator who struck a number of right notes in entering the administration, first under George W. Bush and then Obama. He came alone, without a phalanx of support staff, and he came prepared to speak his mind, not disguising his belief that “the Pentagon was buying too many weapons more suited to the Cold War than to the twenty-first century.” Yet, he was not quite able to transform the military, as he had envisioned, into the fast-moving, lean force of the future, so that what we have today remains vast, overfed and, yes, thoroughly politicized.
A smart and plainspoken—if sometimes obviously self-serving—insider’s view of the military-industrial-governmental complex. Sure to spark plenty of discussion inside the Beltway.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-307-95947-8
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2013
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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