At its most obvious, this is the first half of a rather bland biography of Eisenhower—partly from primary sources, but adding nothing consequential to the record—by a practiced hand and staunch admirer: to Ambrose, Eisenhower was "a great and good man," "one of the great captains of military history," and "one of the most successful presidents of the twentieth century." As a practical matter, much of it approximates a condensation of Ambrose's 1970 account of Eisenhower's WW II role, The Supreme Commander—from which many passages are taken—with the addition of material on Mamie (from Letters to Mamie), Kay Summersby (from her two books), and son John (from his memoirs); once again, too, Ambrose purports to be recreating events from Eisenhower's point of view—now with a "personal" component. In the last analysis, however, the Eisenhower we see—sedulously avoiding controversy, for instance, from 1930s Washington to WW II France to the presidency (and McCarthy)—is not very different from the figure portrayed in Peter Lyon's sophisticated interpretive biography or by military historians. Apropos of the earlier years, Ambrose offers a kind of split image—stressing (almost mechanically) the narrowness of Eisenhower's family-and-Abilene background, his rote learning at West Point, the US military's suspicion of politicians (particularly during the interwar period). And though he moots Eisenhower's wrong-side-of-the-tracks upbringing (insightfully examined by others), he does make subsequent reference to "buried feelings of jealousy and bitterness, like those of his childhood"; though he makes much of Eisenhower's unbroken attachment to Mamie, he does depict her querulousness as a trial (and suggests, reasonably enough, that Ike might have been in love with Kay too). On the war itself, he details "how often and how seriously Eisenhower botched things in North Africa" (from the Darlan deal to Kasserine Pass); justifies Eisenhower's selection for command of Overlord on the basis of his ability to direct combined British-American operations (not "his generalship, which in truth had been cautious and hesitant"); and takes full note of his crucial "desire to appease" Montgomery and Patton—leading to some of the war's "great mistakes" (like the failure to quickly take Antwerp and perhaps end hostilities in 1944). Still later, Ambrose notes that Eisenhower was "ashamed" of not having defended Marshall against McCarthy's charges in the 1952 campaign. None of this, however, differs from the historical consensus—nor does Ambrose's defense of Eisenhower's end-of-war decision not to race the Russians to Berlin. What he adds is a glaze of veneration: Eisenhower is a great man, and a great military captain, and prospectively a great president, because he had great human qualities—above all, the "self-confidence" that inspired trust in wartime and impelled him to seek the presidency ("He knew that he was smarter, more experienced, and had better principles than his competitors. . ."). A curious formulation, but one that will likely appeal—as the book will—to others who feel as Ambrose does.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1983
ISBN: 0671440691
Page Count: 648
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1983
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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