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FINDING MY VOICE

MY JOURNEY TO THE WEST WING AND THE PATH FORWARD

A modest and insightful addition to a growing shelf of books by insiders from the Obama administration.

Jarrett's brisk, even-tempered memoir follows the former senior adviser to President Barack Obama from a childhood spent first in Iran and then in Chicago through her experiences during Obama's two terms in office.

The author’s parents moved to Iran in 1955 because her father knew that as a black physician, he would have better opportunities there than in the United States. She was born there the next year, and five years later, the family returned to Chicago, where her mother's large extended family lived. After law school and a stint in corporate law, she began working in Chicago city government. In 1991, while she was working as Mayor Richard Daley's deputy chief of staff, she hired a young Michelle Robinson, then Barack Obama's fiancee. She went on to become friends with Robinson and Obama and worked on Obama's campaign before serving in the White House. Jarrett also shares her personal struggles: escaping a difficult marriage, raising a daughter on her own, overcoming a fear of public speaking, enduring menopause, and experiencing the pressure “to work twice as hard and be twice as good as white people.” Her close relationship with the Obamas allows for an intimate view of events on the campaign trail and life in the White House. Her account of her years in the administration shifts smoothly between her own work life, including the mentoring of young female staff members, and a broader consideration of the administration's goals. She gives special consideration to the challenges of passing the Affordable Care Act, and while she clearly chooses her words carefully, her frustration with what she sees as the recalcitrant Republicans in Congress sometimes breaks through. Throughout, she emphasizes the importance of communication among people of differing political views and the necessity of change based in local communities rather than imposed on a national level.

A modest and insightful addition to a growing shelf of books by insiders from the Obama administration.

Pub Date: April 2, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-525-55813-2

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019

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NIGHT

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. 

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.

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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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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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