A solid entry in the realm of presidential biography.
Veteran biographer Spitz (Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child, 2014, etc.) offers a broad and occasionally deep cradle-to-grave examination of Ronald Reagan (1911-2004).
The author’s take on the controversial former president is mostly balanced, as he mixes the policy failures and successes with the personal shortcomings and strengths; this is neither pathography nor hagiography. However, some readers may question the book’s role within the biographic enterprise. Just three years ago, acclaimed historian H.W. Brands released a mostly lauded Reagan biography that was just as massive as this one. In 1991, master journalist Lou Cannon, an acknowledged Reagan expert, published the memorably titled President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime. Between those two books, there were several other first-rate accounts of Reagan’s life published. Nonetheless, readers seeking the freshest Reagan biography, with access to the most recently available research material, should welcome Spitz’s entry. The strictly chronological approach is easy to track, and because the author is such a skilled stylist, the narrative flows smoothly. The major strength of this version is Spitz’s consistently diligent effort to provide context beyond just his main subject (most readers already know the highlights). That broader context is especially useful in understanding the young Reagan’s family, especially his rolling-stone father; in realizing that Reagan rose above his modest family circumstances and indifferent academic performance by being the right guy at the right place at the right time, particularly with regard to the start of a movie career; and in grasping how he quickly morphed from a supporter of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal to a conservative, anti-communist zealot. Reagan resisted a career in electoral politics for a brief time, but he determined that career would play to his strengths as a handsome true believer in American exceptionalism. Spitz also skillfully portrays numerous supporting characters, especially Reagan wives Jane Wyman and Nancy Davis.
A solid entry in the realm of presidential biography.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-59420-531-6
Page Count: 880
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
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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