This concise biography makes a good case that Reagan was the second most important president of the 20th century after...
The latest in the commendable American Presidents series is a thoughtful biography of an increasingly well-regarded president.
Many observers during Ronald Reagan’s presidency held a low opinion of his intellect. Time has not altered that perception, but most historians, including Slate Group chairman and former Slate magazine editor Weisberg (The Bush Tragedy, 2008, etc.) agree, often reluctantly, that he presided over significant changes in the United States. Although no conservative like his subject, Weisberg takes his historical duties seriously, laying out Reagan’s actions with an admirable lack of pop psychology. A successful radio announcer and actor, Reagan enjoyed politics, serving twice as Screen Actors Guild president before election as California governor in 1966. Attuned to the national rightward swing, he denounced government, regulation, and taxes but left implementation to his staff, who discovered, to their annoyance, that he hated conflict and had no objection to compromise. “He knew what he believed, meant what he said, and made clear what he intended to do,” writes the author. “He didn’t suffer from anxiety or self-doubt. The search for something beneath the surface has tended to produce few results.” The massive tax cut that began his presidency did not discourage him from extolling a balanced budget, and he accepted the almost yearly tax increases that followed. He appointed Antonin Scalia to the Supreme Court but also, despite objections, Sandra Day O’Connor. The electorate loved his speeches attacking student protesters, welfare, and communism, but activism seemed to bore him, except in his campaign against nuclear war. Ignoring opposition from his administration and outrage from conservative commentators, he embraced disarmament proposals from the new Soviet premier, Mikhail Gorbachev.
This concise biography makes a good case that Reagan was the second most important president of the 20th century after Franklin Roosevelt.Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9727-6
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Times/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
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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