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
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.
In her first nonfiction book, novelist Grande (Dancing with Butterflies, 2009, etc.) delves into her family’s cycle of separation and reunification.
Raised in poverty so severe that spaghetti reminded her of the tapeworms endemic to children in her Mexican hometown, the author is her family’s only college graduate and writer, whose honors include an American Book Award and International Latino Book Award. Though she was too young to remember her father when he entered the United States illegally seeking money to improve life for his family, she idolized him from afar. However, she also blamed him for taking away her mother after he sent for her when the author was not yet 5 years old. Though she emulated her sister, she ultimately answered to herself, and both siblings constantly sought affirmation of their parents’ love, whether they were present or not. When one caused disappointment, the siblings focused their hopes on the other. These contradictions prove to be the narrator’s hallmarks, as she consistently displays a fierce willingness to ask tough questions, accept startling answers, and candidly render emotional and physical violence. Even as a girl, Grande understood the redemptive power of language to define—in the U.S., her name’s literal translation, “big queen,” led to ridicule from other children—and to complicate. In spelling class, when a teacher used the sentence “my mamá loves me” (mi mamá me ama), Grande decided to “rearrange the words so that they formed a question: ¿Me ama mi mamá? Does my mama love me?”
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6177-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
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