Despite the enormous research already done in fleshing out the lives of the multitalented, ambitious Jefferson and Hamilton,...
Two antithetical but complementary Founding Fathers, duly and exhaustively compared and contrasted.
Despite the enormous research already done in fleshing out the lives of the multitalented, ambitious Jefferson and Hamilton, Ferling (History, Emeritus/State Univ. of West Georgia; Independence: The Struggle to Set America Free, 2011, etc.) leaves no stone unturned in sifting through the biographies, walking readers through their respective childhoods, and flushing out influences that shaped their livelihoods and helped form their fundamental ideologies regarding the new nation. Though he came from the Southern aristocracy, Jefferson grasped early on the need for land reform as the only way to render the new country into a classical Enlightenment model of “republicanism.” This radical ideology included emancipation of slaves, rejection of primogeniture, offering wider educational opportunities and granting freedom of religion. Hamilton, on the other hand, the survivor of a dysfunctional West Indies family, made good in life through his own industry, intelligence and connections. He was schooled in business and determined to distinguish himself in Washington’s Continental Army even as a college student; yet even there, he gleaned the need for a centralized levying of taxes and imposts, the creation of a national bank and, presciently, the use of black soldiers. Jefferson’s time as a diplomat in Paris underscored his views about alleviating the inequity of wealth, while Hamilton’s work as a tax collector and lawyer convinced him of the need for “bracing the federal system” against “unrestrained popular passion.” As Ferling scrupulously writes, the two founders had essentially different views of human nature: Hamilton believed in a natural elite, while Jefferson denounced the oppression of the many by the tyranny of the few. The author’s comparative study is bold, brisk and lucid.From hammering out constitutional liberties and building the nation’s banking system to jockeying in early elections, Ferling draws crisp, sharp delineations between his two subjects.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-60819-528-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2013
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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