A memoir of Mr. Acheson's subordinate service from 1941 to 1947 and of his five years as Secretary of State. The book is suffused with praise of Truman. Its reconstruction of specific engagements like Iran and postwar Germany is detailed, with attention to diplomatic stresses; its recollections of State Department life emphasize administrative problems and the task of putting policies across to Congress. Acheson depicts himself as worker, not architect; basic foreign-policy stands are taken for granted. It is unnecessary to dwell on ideological distortions and evasions — they arise most conspicuously in Acheson's account of the Korean War, which shows how the Chinese were provoked yet terms them "aggressors" off and on. Acheson not only refuses to condescend to argue for his view of Russia as "aggressively expansionist," but censures the "preventive war" advocacy of his opponents. Aphorisms, jokes and reminiscences of individual statesmen from Morgenthau to Mossadegh outweigh salient advice to posterity. Acheson's remarks on the China issue and the McCarthy days are lively and dignified; however, they also clinch the impression of an anti-democratic regard for the American citizenry as primitives open to demagoguery from right or left, and mere troop-suppliers for ventures like Korea, whose sufferings on all sides he quite ignores. As apologetics, the book may be more effective than Truman's memoirs. As analytic history it is less interesting than Kennan's or Ridgway's. As narrative, it's rarely tedious or inspiring although obviously important.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1969
ISBN: 0393304124
Page Count: 850
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1969
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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