My Book Reviews

Sustaining a Theme 2 My last post finished with a review of David Maraniss's biography of William Jefferson Clinton, a fairly objective account by an unauthorized biographer that concluded with his declaration that he would run for President in October 1991 at the end of a 32 minute speech at The Old State House in Little Rock, Arkansas.  Maraniss writes wonderfully clear prose as one would expect from a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.  In one of his concluding paragraphs he writes: His mother was there to hear him say those words.  She had been waiting to hear them since he was a boy.  She was the one who taught him how to block things out and to keep going through tough times.  She gave him his perseverance and his optimism.  Now she was determined to play out one final act of will.  Four months earlier her doctor had told her that her breast cancer had spread and that she was dying.  She had not told her son.  She hoped not to te...

Sustaining a Theme 1 My copies of these two books Now that I have reviewed several books on JFK and his brother Bobby, I suppose it would be no surprise if I were to review several books about and by President William Jefferson Clinton.  I also got to listen to this great American leader in College Green on December 1, 1995 where 80, 000 people listened attentively and with occasional cheers as he addressed the citizens of Dublin from a platform outside the Bank of Ireland, that is the old parliament building directly opposite Trinity College.  The link for this writer here is that in June 1963 William Jefferson Clinton as a 17 year old student (when he had been elected as the Arkansas representative to the American Legion's Boys State) met his hero President John F. Kennedy who was also, as I have stated in the post immediately before this one, an Irish hero, on a par in the then Ireland of the early 1960s with the Pope in Rome. There is even a famous photograph of t...

Passion Before I indicate the books that I wish to review here let me say some brief words on the topic of passion.  It has long been my belief that love or desire or passion for one's career counts for a lot.  I had wanted to become a teacher since I was a young boy of ten.  Why? Quite simply, because I was awe-struck by the ability to teach of an old teacher near his retirement.  This man was still enthusiastic and still interested in his students after many years of teaching. Indeed, I remember telling my mother that I wished to be a teacher like Mr. Murray because I had learnt so much from him with such a singular ease.  It was not solely down to me at all, though I was a good student.  There was something about Mr Murray that I intuitively admired, and looking back at it after all these years (46 to be precise), that one thing was his passion for and his commitment to or enthusiasm for his job. Some people write off this quality far too easily i...