Not Groom at his best but certainly serviceable for readers without much background in the history of the era.
Novelist and historian Groom (El Paso, 2016, etc.) recounts the origins and fortunes of the grand alliance forged to battle the Axis powers in World War II.
In the early 1930s, it would have seemed unlikely for the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and the United States to agree on anything. As the author observes, when incoming President Franklin Roosevelt recognized the Soviet Union as a legitimate government, he did so “against the wishes of a large part of the country, including his own mother.” Winston Churchill was implacably opposed to any such recognition and held Josef Stalin in scorn, detesting everything about Bolshevism—yet still came together with Roosevelt to join forces with Stalin against Hitler in the west, eventually opening a two-front war. Getting to that point required plenty of maneuvering, and the powers developed considerable skills in hiding things from one another as each jockeyed for position to be first among equals. Groom’s account of how Churchill, he of “devious mind,” convinced Roosevelt to sign on to the invasion of North Africa is excellent. For all that, there’s not much new in this history, and certainly nothing that readers well-versed in WWII history won’t know. Yet that doesn’t seem to be the audience here, for Groom writes as if his readers had never heard of Churchill, or FDR, or Uncle Joe. That notwithstanding, his accounts of the Tehran Conference of 1943 and the later Yalta Conference are tasty pieces of drama in which Stalin played a too-believing Roosevelt while planning a postwar Soviet empire, or at least a system of satellite states. At the latter gathering, he notes, “Roosevelt made the stunning declaration that he did not intend for American troops to remain in Europe more than two years after the war, and Stalin, apparently emboldened by the news, lied or prevaricated about his intentions in Eastern Europe.”
Not Groom at his best but certainly serviceable for readers without much background in the history of the era.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4262-1966-5
Page Count: 464
Publisher: National Geographic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
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
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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