Biographer Randall (Thomas Jefferson, 1993) adds another compelling figure to his portrait gallery of America's early leaders. It was one of the triumphs of Washington's life that, when stymied in one of his ambitions, he found an outlet for it elsewhere. Though frustrated, for instance, in his desire to become a career British army officer because of undistinguished service in the French and Indian War (he was accused of touching off the war by killing a French officer who may have been on a diplomatic mission), he learned how to defeat the British through speed and knowledge of the terrain by witnessing firsthand the defeat of his commander, Gen. Edward Braddock. With almost half of this account devoted to Washington's pre-Revolutionary life, Randall compresses the more consequential war and early Federal years, thus sacrificing some of the drama that galvanized his biography of Benedict Arnold. On the other hand, Randall shrewdly details how Washington's dealings with hostile foes and haughty allies in the French and Indian War and his secret alliances with other patriots made him ``a master of discretion and deception.'' He provides new insight into how Washington's growing awareness of the pitfalls of Virginia's tobacco economy led to disenchantment with the British mercantile system. Most important, he finds a thread between the prewar micromanaging plantation owner and the wartime ringmaster of intelligence units and surprise engagements like Trenton, discovering ``the first modern American corporate executive.'' While displaying a more dry-eyed willingness to countenance unpleasant actions than what one expects (e.g., ordering Arnold's assassination), this Washington is also moving in his renunciations of power at the end of the revolution and at the end of his second term as president. Not the landmark in storytelling and scholarship achieved by previous Washington biographers Douglas Southall Freeman and James Thomas Flexner, but an often penetrating narrative of Washington's formative influences.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-8050-2779-3
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1997
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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