In the 250th anniversary year of Jefferson's birth, Randall (History/Univ. of Vermont) offers a brilliant, magisterial, and gracefully narrated biography of the sage of Monticello—a worthy successor to the author's Benedict Arnold (1990) and A Little Revenge (1984). Randall argues that much Jeffersonian scholarship relies on misinterpretations of the Founding Father's writings, or even ignores the bulk of his voluminous papers. By drawing on this newly assembled (at Princeton University) trove, Randall makes significant reinterpretations of important, though often overlooked, periods in Jefferson's life. He contends that Jefferson's underexamined early years as a law student under legal scholar George Wythe and as a preeminent member of the colonial Virginia bar, together with his encyclopedic mastery of the works of the French philosophers, explain his emergence as the chief legal spokesman of the Thirteen Colonies. Jefferson became Virginia's leading expert on land law, largely as a result of his frequent legal challenges to titles of landed gentry, and, eventually, he fundamentally rewrote that law. His interest in land law led also to his becoming a strong proponent of westward expansion, both while ending the Revolution (the Paris peace treaty doubled American territory) and during his presidency, through the Louisiana Purchase. Randall also views Jefferson's years in Europe as significant preparation for his formulating foreign policy as President, and he argues convincingly that Jefferson's antislavery views were sincere (despite his status as a major Virginia slaveholder, he worked throughout his life to bring an end to slavery in Virginia, beginning with an emancipation measure—which was shouted down—that he'd helped introduce in 1769 in Virginia's colonial legislature). Throughout the text, Jefferson emerges as a person in whom Enlightenment rationalism battled with powerful passions, both in affairs of the heart and matters of state. A superlative contribution to Jeffersonian scholarship that rebuts some canards in recent literature (Fawn Brodie's sensational allegations about the President's personal life receive short shrift) while revealing the tensions latent in Jefferson's complex personality.
Pub Date: Aug. 9, 1993
ISBN: 0-8050-1577-9
Page Count: 648
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1993
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
