An impressive combination of scrupulous scholarship and powerful storytelling.
A biography of Andrew Jackson that focuses on a period before he was president of the United States—specifically, his rivalry with a U.S. Army general during the War of 1812.
Jackson detested the British—he blamed the deaths of his mother and brothers, who died of various causes during the Revolutionary War period, on them—and deeply pined for military glory, which offered two irrepressible incentives for him to fight in the War of 1812. Professional historians have meticulously scrutinized Jackson’s life, particularly his seemingly insatiable ambition, but debut author Turnbow, a Tennessee-based attorney, turns his attention to a comparatively neglected but intriguing part of his rise to fame, telling the story of the undying antagonism between Jackson and Gen. James Wilkinson. The latter was also profoundly ambitious, and he saw Jackson as a competitor in a zero-sum game for power and acclaim. He aimed to thwart Jackson’s success, even at the expense of military victory. He attempted to deny Jackson’s Tennessee Volunteers necessary supplies, tried to divert Jackson’s troops away from New Orleans to the Spanish province of East Florida, and worked to tarnish Jackson’s name and orchestrate his demotion. Jackson rightly believed that Wilkinson was a treasonous agent of Spain; indeed, the general provided Spain with sensitive intelligence regarding the United States’ plans for westward expansion. Turnbow paints Wilkinson as a “master of manipulation and deception” who always seemed capable of gaining a strategic upper hand. Throughout, the author painstakingly depicts the historical context, including the precariousness of the United States as a still-fledgling nation and the threat posed by hostile Native American warriors; his account of Tecumseh’s extraordinary attempt to create a confederation to oppose American settlement is among the highlights of his rigorously researched study. Turnbow also lucidly captures Jackson’s impressive courage as well as the ways in which his ambition undermined his judgment; he nearly ruined his career by associating with the treacherous Aaron Burr. The account is relentlessly granular, and at times Turnbow produces an amount of detail that’s sometimes more disorienting than edifying. Overall, though, his effort is both original and thrillingly dramatic.
An impressive combination of scrupulous scholarship and powerful storytelling.Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-692-19527-7
Page Count: 602
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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