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THE RISE OF A PRAIRIE STATESMAN

Name: THE RISE OF A PRAIRIE STATESMAN
Author: Thomas J. Knock
ISBN: 978-0-691-14299-9

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF GEORGE MCGOVERN

by Thomas J. Knock ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2016

A fine, steady study sets the stage for the second volume: running for president in 1972.

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The first volume in the biography of George McGovern (1922-2012).

Knock (Foreign Relations, 20th-Century U.S. History/Southern Methodist Univ.; To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order, 1992, etc.) depicts his subject as really too good to be true, or at least too good to become president: decent, conscientious, and authentically progressive. Raised in the small, insular town of Mitchell, South Dakota, the product of a Methodist minister and his second wife, McGovern was inculcated by the devout, hardscrabble, patriotic America of the Depression and World War II—indeed, he returned from the war a hero as a bomber pilot. Despite the Republican slant in the state of South Dakota, there was also a strong progressive streak, as most residents admired and benefited from the policies of the New Deal, especially in farming and agriculture. Already a married man with children when he plunged into his graduate work in American labor history and a winning debater since high school, McGovern naturally gravitated toward politics. He was deeply troubled by the red-baiting in the 1948 election between Henry Wallace and Harry Truman. Moreover, as the Cold War hysteria heated up, McGovern began to forge in his writing and speeches the core of his vital beliefs, as Knock unravels chronologically and meticulously. As he writes, McGovern believed that America “erred in attempts to impose its own values and institutions upon other countries” (e.g., in Latin America and China) and that the wasteful and unnecessary military-industrial buildup could better be spent at home on education, mental health facilities, and other programs. Courageously, McGovern went against the normative grain during his stint as a congressman and later senator, especially regarding the Vietnam War. Though the writing is merely capable, Knock delivers an important reconsideration of a significant 20th-century politician.

A fine, steady study sets the stage for the second volume: running for president in 1972.

Pub Date: March 1, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-691-14299-9

Page Count: 544

Publisher: Princeton Univ.

Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015

Categories:

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

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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.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.