Perhaps best known for his popular film biographies and histories, and thus no stranger to tales of scandal and coverup,...
A compulsively readable account of the decadeslong rivalries, grudges, and battles between and within the Roosevelt families of Oyster Bay and Hyde Park.
The most direct link between the two distant clans was Eleanor, daughter of Theodore’s younger, philandering, alcoholic brother Elliot. Pitied by the family for her timidity and homeliness, Eleanor grew up to marry Franklin of the Hyde Park Roosevelts and become the most consequential first lady ever. Mann (Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood, 2014, etc.) sketches the career progress and high achievement of the three Roosevelt titans, but he focuses on the private history and the cost of their unceasing quest for political power to themselves, their spouses, lovers, children, and close friends: how Teddy Roosevelt’s fear of scandal caused him to spurn his brother; how his example, his drive, and ambition distorted the lives of his sons, particularly Ted Jr., whose political career never quite measured up, and Kermit, whose shady business dealings and alcoholism led to suicide; how his troubled bond with daughter Alice led to her own hollow marriage, her thwarted ambition for her brother Ted, and her bitterness at the rise of the usurpers, Franklin and Eleanor. Eleanor’s refusal even to meet her illegitimate brother, Elliot Roosevelt Mann, whose story will be new to most readers, her vexed relations with her mother-in-law and her own children, and her complicated, intimate attachments to female friends all receive Mann’s close attention. He also spotlights FDR’s affairs and the unconventional life of his cousin Jimmy. Kermit’s doomed son, Alice’s affair with Sen. William Borah, Eleanor’s remorseless taunting of cousin Ted—the stories tumble out until no skeleton remains closeted.
Perhaps best known for his popular film biographies and histories, and thus no stranger to tales of scandal and coverup, feuds and intrigue, Mann writes sympathetically about all the Roosevelts but particularly the black sheep, the nonconformists whose births into this powerful family imposed special burdens.Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-238333-4
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
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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