Much nostalgia and admiration; very little analysis; virtually no censure.
Another paean to the “greatest generation” of young Americans, this time focusing on the B-24 bomber crews—with special attention to the crew of the Dakota Queen, piloted by future US Senator and 1972 presidential candidate George McGovern.
Ambrose (Nothing Like It in the World, 2000, etc.) took over this project from reporter Michael Takiff, who had begun work on a book about McGovern’s wartime experiences. Ambrose and his editor decided to broaden the scope, and the result is this highly anecdotal biography-cum-military history whose purpose seems more to celebrate than to scrutinize. The author acknowledges that he is a McGovern partisan, so seldom is heard a discouraging word about the young South Dakota pilot’s 35 combat missions—or about his character. Ambrose begins with a brief chapter about the B-24 (called the “Liberator”), describing its spartan design and the rigorous physical and psychological demands it placed on those who flew and maintained it. (He notes wistfully that only one of the craft is currently flying; virtually all were recycled after the war.) He then goes on to answer one of his questions: “From whence came such men?” He describes McGovern’s background (his father was a preacher), then follows him (and others) through the arduous and highly competitive training process. McGovern arrived in Naples in September 1944 and proceeded to the base at Cerignola, where the B-24s launched their assaults on the Nazi assets, principally oil refineries and manufacturing centers. (Ambrose mentions that McGovern’s group once attacked very near Auschwitz but elects to summarize FDR’s position rather than enter the should-we-or-shouldn’t-we? debate about bombing the death camp.) McGovern emerges as a skilled, courageous pilot (he earned a Distinguished Flying Cross) who made a couple of spectacular landings in perilous situations and enjoyed the respect of his colleagues. His inadvertent bombing of an Italian farmhouse troubled him for a half-century. Ambrose, as always, finds poignant details, tells powerful stories.
Much nostalgia and admiration; very little analysis; virtually no censure.Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2001
ISBN: 0-7432-0339-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2001
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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