History that remains solidly relevant today, and a real eye-opener for anyone who thinks that fierce debates over tax...
A biography of populist politician William Jennings Bryan that demonstrates that progressive evangelicalism is nothing new.
Kazin (History/Georgetown; The Populist Persuasion, 1995, etc.) summarizes in just one chapter Bryan’s first 30 years: birth in 1860, Illinois childhood, study of law, marriage to Mary Elizabeth Baird. The biographer’s real interest lies in Bryan’s public career, jumping quickly into Bryan’s move to Nebraska and subsequent terms in Congress, beginning in 1890. The author argues that his subject was the first politician to envision a government that, through its expansive powers, could do great things for ordinary people. (Well, some ordinary people: Bryan’s concern extended only to white folks.) His populism sprang from his Christianity, and if his “progressive interpretation of the Gospels” never got him elected to the White House (he ran for president three times), it did earn him the enthusiastic devotion of tens of thousands of Americans. A gifted orator, Bryan frequently lectured on tariffs and the gold standard. Later, he took up the causes of anti-imperialism, prohibition and women’s suffrage; as Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State, he was a strong advocate of peace. Americans today, however, remember him mostly as the diehard opponent of evolution depicted in the popular play Inherit The Wind. Kazin revisits the well-known scene from the 1925 Scopes trial, in which Bryan, lawyer for the prosecution, actually took the stand as a witness and wilted under Clarence Darrow’s sharp-tongued questions about biblical literalism. (Bryan died six days later.) But Kazin also usefully contextualizes Bryan’s hostility toward the theory of evolution: In addition to believing that it “opened the door wide to immoral behavior,” he worried about the slippery slope from Darwinism to eugenics.
History that remains solidly relevant today, and a real eye-opener for anyone who thinks that fierce debates over tax reform, corporate power, imperialism and evolution are recent developments in American politics and culture.Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2006
ISBN: 0-375-41135-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 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
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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