An unconvincing attempt to read extraneous political agendas into the first president's fact-finding tours.
An examination of the first presidential road trips.
Between 1789 and 1791, George Washington arranged to visit all 13 of the original states, an ambitious undertaking in an era when transportation was slow and hazardous. He passed through the middle states on his way to his inauguration and then traveled to the others in three trips: to New England (except Rhode Island) in 1789, to Rhode Island after it ratified the Constitution in 1790, and to the southern states in 1791. His stated purpose for these travels was "to become better acquainted with the principal Characters & internal Circumstances [of the states], as well as to be more accessible to numbers of well-informed persons, who might give [him] useful information and advices on political subjects." Breen (Professor at Large/Univ. of Vermont; American Insurgents, American Patriots: The Revolution of the People, 2010, etc.) conflates these travels into a single "journey" and imposes upon them two completely different purposes: "to bind scattered individuals and competing regions into a viable federal union" and "to engage with [the common people] in an ongoing conversation about the character of the republican experiment." He offers barely any historical support for these aims aside from the fact that Washington believed passionately in a strong central government. While the author ably describes the adulatory parades and receptions that greeted Washington in New England, he chooses to interpret what appear to be personal accolades as enthusiasm for constitutional government. He reports no speeches, addresses, or private pleas in explicit support of federalism and says little of substance about the southern tour at all. The narrative is presented in simple prose and a condescending tone in which all involved—Washington, state leaders, the people—appear as rather dim bulbs in need of learning or being reminded of something.
An unconvincing attempt to read extraneous political agendas into the first president's fact-finding tours.Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4516-7542-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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