A vigorous biography (the second this year: see Edwin M. Yoder Jr.'s Joe Alsop's Cold War, p. 156) of the brothers whose journalistic opinion shaped American foreign policy through much of the Cold War. Writing in journals like the Saturday Evening Post, the New York Herald Tribune, and especially Newsweek, Joseph (191089) and Stewart (191474) Alsop espoused militant anticommunism and a robust vision of America as the world's one rightful superpower. They grew up among affluent bluebloods who would advise America's postwar leaders, and they had unprecedented access to presidents from Truman to Carter. Under the Kennedy administration the Alsops reached their zenith as shapers of opinion, offering the president their views on sweeping matters of state and translating Kennedy's aims for their readers. Joseph, the better known of the two, was ``an aristocrat with aristocratic tastes and an aristocratic bearing,'' and also a world-traveling ``shoe-leather reporter.'' Stewart was the more analytical, given to ``long expository pieces designed to lay bare the inner workings of government and the intricacies of major issues.'' Reaching millions of readers, this journalistic tag team redefined the role of the media in American politics, exerting an influence that Merry, executive editor of Congressional Quarterly Publications and former Wall Street Journal Washington correspondent, masterfully explores. (Those who complain that the so-called liberal news media enjoy too much power today ought to note that the way was paved by archconservatives.) But the Alsops were not mere cheerleaders for the power elite, Merry writes; they criticized several administrations for not confronting Russian and Chinese communist expansion more directly. And whereas both Alsops are remembered as hawks, Merry shows that the confusion of Vietnam caused them more than once to reconsider. In the aftermath of that fiasco, their faith in American power bowed but not broken, Joseph summed up their beliefs: ``Nothing endures, because there is always change, and there is always war.'' An important and thoroughly well written addition to the literature on ``the American century.'' (16 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-670-83868-3
Page Count: 672
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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