Foreign policy master, political brawler, family man, loner, tragic hero, criminal, elder statesman, eternal conniver—Richard Nixon plays all of these roles in the final installment of Ambrose's fascinating three-volume biography (1987, 1989) of the ex-President. Ambrose (History/Univ. of New Orleans) meticulously traces how Nixon—flush with triumph from his landslide reelection victory over George McGovern—spoiled, through his mishandling of Watergate, his best-laid plans for reorganizing the executive branch of the government and for achieving a durable peace in Vietnam and with the Soviet Union. There aren't many surprises here about this extensively documented portion of Nixon's life, but Ambrose compensates with an excellent assessment of his subject's character and record. The author underscores what America lost, as a result of Nixon's Icarus-like fall, in such areas as arms control, energy policy, the Mideast, and national health insurance (though, dubiously, he bemoans the Reagan Revolution without acknowledging how much it owed to Nixon's polarizing campaigns). Admiring Nixon's perseverance, Ambrose draws a sympathetic portrait of the beleaguered politician's attempts to handle a vain Henry Kissinger, military top brass contemptuous of dÉtente, even politicians and lawyers unnerved by Nixon's blatant disregard for the Constitution. In the end, despite appreciating Nixon's intelligence and ability, Ambrose scores the President for a lack of domestic achievements and an even more demonstrable lack of virtue. An adroit retelling of how Nixon plunged into his political black hole—and why, like Lady Macbeth's "damned spot," and despite his carefully orchestrated comeback, his role in the Watergate cover-up can never be obliterated.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-671-69188-0
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1991
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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