A touch too uncritical for readers brought up on hardnosed journalistic takes on politicians, but of interest to students of...
Generally admiring biography of the New York politician whom many have criticized but few have outflanked.
Former New York Times columnist Purnick has been on the mayoral beat for years. Her study of Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire mayor, takes a heavy human-interest approach, more befitting a magazine piece than the front page. We learn that Bloomberg, in the manner of Elvis, is fond of peanut butter and burnt bacon, and that his style of managing “takes self-control, coolness, a refusal to indulge emotions or denounce the obstacles, and no vindictiveness or grudge-holding.” Those are good traits for a politico to have, to be sure—even one who spent $100, by Purnick’s reckoning, for every vote he won in the second-term 2005 race, and who revels in “racist, sexist and homophobic jokes” that would normally put an end to a political career backed by shallower pockets. The author does a solid job contrasting Bloomberg’s style with predecessor Rudy Giuliani’s. “Avuncular he is not,” Purnick avers, but Bloomberg gets things done, including carefully lobbying for a suspension of the term-limits rule to bag himself a third tour of the mayor’s office. The author’s careful account of that victory—a worthy case study for anyone seeking ways to game a system designed to protect voters from anti-democratic dynasties—is worth the price of the book.
A touch too uncritical for readers brought up on hardnosed journalistic takes on politicians, but of interest to students of Gotham politics.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-58648-577-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2009
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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