A fine study of the assassinated senator's contribution to national politics. That we speak at all of a Kennedy legacy is because of Robert Kennedy, writes historian Hilty (Temple Univ.), who has also written a study of John F. Kennedy. That we connect the Kennedy name to issues of social justice and equity, he continues, is also the result of RFK's work after John's murder. It is fair that we think of the younger Kennedy as a good man, Hilty suggests; but, he reminds us, the Kennedy brothers were above all else politicians who often got credit for more than they achieved. It is as a politician that RFK most engages Hilty, who dissects his role as a political bulldog, crusading attorney, and, above all else, fierce champion and protector of his older brother throughout his political career. In that role, RFK may have committed a few improprieties—including allegedly accepting campaign contributions from the Mafia, delivered by Frank Sinatra. The brothers were, the author continues (disputing the claims of tell-all memoirist Judith Campbell), far too savvy to get too close personally to such transactions; in any event, John Kennedy even joked about such things, telling an audience that he had received a telegram from his father instructing him not to buy one more vote than necessary with the words, ``I'll be damned if I'll pay for a landslide.'' Elsewhere Hilty writes that as attorney general RFK was nonchalant about illegal wiretaps and smear campaigns, favorite tactics of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. But for all his contradictions, ethical shortcomings, and personal demons, which Hilty explores with care and sympathy, Robert Kennedy found his true calling at the end of his life, using his spiritual intensity and sense of invincibility to effect meaningful social change. This well-written book is timely, coming just as the 30th anniversary of RFK's assassination approaches, and just as the current crop of Kennedy scions is making news for all the wrong reasons. (29 b&w photos)
Pub Date: Nov. 10, 1997
ISBN: 1-56639-566-6
Page Count: 672
Publisher: Temple Univ. Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1997
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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