the US, and the process by which he began subconsciously to understand that the system itself did not work.
A filial but revealing semi-biography of Nikita Khrushchev by his son, now at the Institute for International Studies at
Brown. Because Sergei Khrushchev intends to deal only with those matters he discussed with his father or personally witnessed, he leaves out much of the early life, except for a short memoir composed by his mother, but he supplements the narrative with portions of the full text of Khrushchev's own memoirs. Sergei is strongest on the development of Soviet weapons, particularly missiles, since he was attached as an engineer to one of the main designers. But that perspective is highly relevant to the US-Soviet relationship during that period and to Nikita Khrushchev as a man. To the end of his life, Sergei says, his father could not watch films about the war or read books on the subject. Whatever his bluster—and he concluded after the Suez crisis that his opponents could be intimidated by it—"he didn't even dream of using force." Sergei records his father's tongue-lashing of Marshal Grechko, then commander of the ground forces, for suggesting the conquest of Western Europe. He doesn’t think much of his father's decision to try to station missiles in Cuba—"To this day I can't understand how Father believed such primitive reasoning," he laments in recording the recommendation that the missiles could be disguised as coconut palms—but he pays tribute to the wisdom and courage of both Kennedy and Khrushchev in restraining the fervor of their respective hotheads during the crisis. Indeed, Sergei's account of that crisis may be the most psychologically acute we have of the reactions on both sides. A fascinating portrait of a man of immense vitality, a fervent Communist, convinced that the Soviet Union would surpass
the US, and the process by which he began subconsciously to understand that the system itself did not work.Pub Date: April 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-271-01927-1
Page Count: 848
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2000
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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