A thoroughly researched biography of a remarkable figure.
The story of a dynamic political outsider who mounted a formidable challenge to Franklin D. Roosevelt for the presidency.
In 1940, Roosevelt was deciding whether to run for a third term, a war in Europe was raging, inflaming debate about whether the U.S. should join, and the Republican Party was looking desperately for a candidate who could take back the presidency. The man they chose was Indiana-born Wendell Willkie (1892-1944), a wealthy businessman with no political experience but considerable charm and who only recently had changed party affiliation. “He’ll go down as the darkest horse in the stable for 1940,” said one political commentator. Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Lewis (Emeritus, History/New York Univ.; W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography, 2009, etc.), who was awarded the National Humanities Medal, draws on abundant archival and published material to create a spirited portrait of the charismatic, outspoken Willkie, who took the political spotlight from 1940 until his death four years later. Time magazine founder Henry Luce called Willkie “a force of nature”; decades later, historian David Halberstam characterized him as “the rarest of things in those days, a Republican with sex appeal.” Willkie was forthright in his criticism of FDR, who Willkie claimed curtailed the Bill of Rights, fomented class conflict, undermined business (as president of a major utility company, Willkie was a fierce opponent of the Tennessee Valley Authority and other New Deal programs), and was itching to involve America in another war. Willkie felt no party loyalty but, Lewis asserts, embraced a “creed of liberalism” that “opposed equally unregulated wealth and unlimited government power.” He drew exuberant crowds as he campaigned across the country, and polls showed the election too close to call. Willkie lost to FDR but only by 5 million votes. Post-election, Willkie and FDR became close allies, and after he returned from a fact-finding trip to Europe at FDR’s request, Willkie became a strong interventionist. Lewis recounts Willkie’s prescient views of the postwar world as well as his staunch civil rights advocacy.
A thoroughly researched biography of a remarkable figure.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-87140-457-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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