The dramatic odyssey of an American who cast his lot with mainland China's Communists following WW II—and who lived to regret it. A member of the American Communist Party who had organized coal miners and steelworkers in the South prior to entering the Army in 1942, Rittenberg was trained as an interpreter. Posted to Asia, the author stayed on as a UN employee after V-J Day, and he soon joined forces with the Reds who eventually wrested control of China. The only US citizen ever to be accepted by the Chinese CP, Rittenberg earned his keep as an upper-echelon official in the Party's Broadcast Administration before, during, and after the Revolution. An ardent leftist, he gave his intellectual and ideological all to the presumptively common cause—and, for his pains, he was twice imprisoned, for a total of 16 years. Though rehabilitated following a ten-year stay behind bars that began at the height of the Cultural Revolution, he and his loyal Chinese wife made for the States in 1980. Here, with the help of Wall Street Journalist correspondent Bennett (The Death of the Organization Man, 1990), Rittenberg offers an account of his China sojourn that's remarkable, among other reasons, for its near- perfect pitch. At the outset, he tells his tale in the same awed tones as might a callow, hero-worshipping youth. Subsequently, as he gains maturity and perspective, his voice becomes that of an aging radical no longer willing to swallow the metamythical pronouncements of despots whose lust for power has undermined a shared vision. Throughout, moreover, Rittenberg (who turned 70 last year) provides insightful takes on Mao, Jiang Qing (Mao's hard- driving wife), Zhou En-lai, Lin Biao, Deng Xiaoping, and other notables with whom he treated during his 35 years in China. The gripping saga of an expatriate whose extraordinary experiences left him without illusions about Marxism—but with his personal ideals triumphantly intact. (Eight pages of b&w photographs, one map—not seen)
Pub Date: April 19, 1993
ISBN: 0-671-73595-0
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1993
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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