A sentimental biography of a First Lady best remembered- -perhaps unjustly—for her hairstyle. As Hillary Clinton's constantly changing hairstyles may reflect a search to define herself in her White House role, Mamie Eisenhower's stubborn loyalty to the famous Mamie bangs may reflect the loyalty to friends and family that was her outstanding characteristic. That, at least, is how granddaughter Eisenhower (Breaking Free, 1995) sees her. As the author describes Mamie, she was a wife and mother who ``was right for the 1950s . . . an era when the postwar nation was busily engaged in raising its children and rebuilding.'' Lively, charming, and ``rotten spoiled,'' Mamie Doud was one of four daughters in a very comfortable, if not wealthy, Denver family. Married at 19, she began a successful 50-year career as Dwight Eisenhower's wife. She learned discipline and self-control and made homes for him in two barren rooms in Texas, in a vermin-infested house in Panama, and, of course, in the White House. She was a skilled hostess and a tactful helpmate, enhancing the very important social side of her husband's army career but never interfering in his professional duties. Enduring the death of their three-year- old son, her own sometimes problematic health, plus prolonged separations when Ike was assigned overseas, Mamie behaved with dignity and discretion, even when rumors of an Eisenhower romance with his driver, Kay Summersby, flew across the Atlantic. There was no such romance, says the author, who also scotches rumors that Mamie was an alcoholic. Much information for this biography comes from family papers and letters, but even with these privileged documents, the Mamie who inspired a half-century of devotion from her famous husband never comes to life. For readers who are Eisenhower buffs and can fill in the great historical and personal gaps that mar this I-remember- Grandma chronicle. (65 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-374-21514-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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