A showcase, in effect, for the attractive personality and deep-held convictions of octogenarian Milton Eisenhower—with little of the zest, acumen, or substantive interest of his memoir The President Is Calling. On the basis that Eisenhower dealt there with his public life, Ambrose and Immerman concentrate on his career in higher education—as president of Kansas State, Penn State, and Johns Hopkins—an area in which they're admittedly not expert. (Immerman also collaborated with Ambrose on Ike's Spies.) Exuding fondness for their subject, they adhere closely to the homespun Eisenhower family image in which he believes (more so, indeed, than Ambrose's latest biography of Dwight Eisenhower, above); yet they term some of his ideas "simplistic"—and two pages later, quote from a thoughtful, Étude-by-Étude Eisenhower appreciation of Chopin. His individuality, in short, eludes them. And even in this truncated account, the early years—Kansas newspapering, meteoric rise in the Agriculture Dept., FDR confidant and aide—most repay the reading: at least things happen. Ambrose and Immerman do try, reiteratively, to develop some themes: Eisenhower's preference for "an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary approach"; his reliance on subordinates; his bent toward "conciliation" (and distaste for confrontation); his warmth, hospitality, outreach (toward students especially)—and his "extreme sensitivity to criticism" (the reason, plausibly, he stayed out of politics). Treating of Eisenhower the higher-educator, they produce only a patchwork of achievements (artificially balanced with the criticisms of detractors). Eisenhower, we're told, liberalized the curriculum and internationalized the student body at "cow college" Kansas State; rid Penn State of its inferiority complex and turned it into a real university; twice put Johns Hopkins on its financial feet—while preserving its small/elite tradition. Everywhere he excelled at legislative lobbying and general fund-raising, and instituted citizenship programs; usually he was admired, and got his way. (In a loyalty-oath crisis at Penn State, however, he looks less than a shining light.) The concluding chapters expand on his current distress with the US (he's fervently for gun control) and his active, good-humored aging. Some future biographer will be grateful for the authors' interview-materials—for present readers, they've been used too earnestly and unimaginatively.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1983
ISBN: 0801892678
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ.
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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