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FROM EXILE TO WASHINGTON

Name: FROM EXILE TO WASHINGTON
Author: W. Michael Blumenthal
ISBN: 978-1-4683-0729-0

A MEMOIR OF LEADERSHIP IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

by W. Michael Blumenthal ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 3, 2013

Blumenthal’s astute understanding of history allows him to ably demonstrate the significance of good leadership.

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Memoir/history of the political leadership of the 20th century, from the former secretary of the treasury under President Jimmy Carter.

Blumenthal’s (The Invisible Wall: The Mystery of the Germans and the Jews, 1998) childhood in Nazi Germany and his family’s exile in the Shanghai ghetto produced a perceptive man who would watch and report the changes of the 20th century. Shanghai’s thousands of refugees managed to fend for themselves (they “were expected to administer their own affairs”) with doctors, a hospital, music, theater, libraries and a few different newspapers. Young Blumenthal spent his teenage years absorbing the various languages of Shanghai, learning the life of the streets and understanding that nothing would ever come easy. Throughout the book, he chronicles the vast changes that took place in the world and especially in Germany and China. Taking advantage of the state’s free education, he took a degree at Berkeley and moved on to Princeton’s Public Affairs program. His assignments in the Kennedy and Carter administrations, his work as trade representative and his many years as a corporate CEO allowed him to meet with leaders around the world. This is his memoir, so he can include what he likes, but his successes in the corporate world aren’t nearly as interesting as his opinions of world leaders. He views Hitler, Stalin, FDR, Churchill and Deng Xiaoping as the most influential leaders of the 20th century. His dealings with and impressions of world leaders such as Menachem Begin, the shah of Iran and Zhou Enlai are only part of his diverse insight into 20th-century history.

Blumenthal’s astute understanding of history allows him to ably demonstrate the significance of good leadership.

Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2013

ISBN: 978-1-4683-0729-0

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Overlook

Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2013

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | POLITICAL & ROYALTY

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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.