A short, but complete look at the long adieu that moved the newly united states spiritually and politically.
Skillful and prolific pop historian Weintraub (Charlotte and Lionel, 2003, etc.) accompanies The Father of His Country for a few months at the end of 1783.
The revolutionary war Washington had successfully prosecuted against all odds was over. The Treaty of Peace had been negotiated, and fair copies were under sail from England. Redcoats were leaving America. Hessians were deserting before they could be shipped home. The Great Man’s public service appeared to be at an end, and Washington happily prepared to return his commander’s commission to Congress. He simply wanted to get home to Martha at Mount Vernon in time for Christmas. In most histories, where General Washington slept on the trip is, understandably, not treated in great detail. Weintraub (Arts and Humanities Emeritus/Penn State) supplies that detail in abundance. From New York, where the formidable general movingly bade farewell to his officers at Fraunces Tavern (the best known episode of the journey home) to the village of Princeton, then a week in Philadelphia and on to Baltimore and Annapolis before he reached the Potomac and home, the hero was lauded and feted all the way. Balls, dinners, fireworks,and speeches of tribute all testified to the universal veneration for America’s chief citizen. In reply to the encomia, his faithful speechwriter scribbled away, though his Excellency (as Washington was habitually addressed) seemed more than equal to the task. The general sought only to lay his sword aside to become “a private Citizen on the Banks of the Potomack,” and he was hailed as a latter-day Cincinnatus who, after securing his nation’s independence, wanted simply to return to his farm. That he disdained all mention of a crown may be Washington’s greatest gift to what he hoped would become a respectable member of the family of nations. How he became a majestic Chief Executive is another story.
A short, but complete look at the long adieu that moved the newly united states spiritually and politically.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2003
ISBN: 0-7432-4654-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2003
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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