Word: memoirize
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...priorities. But by the time Reagan left office, a combination of lower tax revenues and sharply higher spending for defense had sent the deficit through the roof. But as Dick Cheney is reported to have said, "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter." In his recent memoir, former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill quotes the Vice President using those words to shut down an internal White House debate over the budgetary impact of Bush's tax cuts. And at least with respect to the political costs, he was right. Reagan demonstrated that among voters, the easily understood appeal...
When Mao Zedong's Communist revolution completed its sweep of the mainland in 1949, the oft-asked question in Washington was who had "lost" China. Former American spy, diplomat and straight shooter James Lilley argues in his sweeping memoir China Hands that this historical puzzler is a red herring: America never had China, and the very idea is counterproductive. To influence China, America first has to respect that the vast land has its own interests and ways. Lilley knows. He was born in Qingdao, the son of an American oil executive, and China has been the center of his life...
...memoir tends to meander, but that's the result of its strange conception. Lilley's son Jeffrey initiated the project more than five years ago to learn more about his father's idealistic, superachieving brother, Frank, who committed suicide at the age of 26 while posted in Japan as a detachment commander during the U.S. military occupation. A pacifist, Frank was crushed by the destruction he saw in Japan and felt conflicted by his belief that military might was America's way forward, which he expressed to his younger brother in a good-bye letter. Frank, a world-record swimmer...
...Written by first-time author Li Cunxin, Dancer is a poor-boy-makes-good memoir populated by a strange cast of historical figures. Chief among them is the rabid Jiang Qing, Mao's infamous wife, who was a fierce proponent of the Great Helmsman's postulate that "There is in fact no such thing as art ... detached from or independent of politics." To Madame Mao, all presentation was propaganda; she drafted armies of performers to edify the masses through highly politicized operas and films, such as the epic revolutionary musical The East is Red. She also revived the once outlawed...
...Unlike the elegant prose of novelist Anchee Min's 1994 memoir Red Azalea (Min was similarly plucked from serfdom to join Madam Mao's cultural crusade), Li's straightforward narrative rarely delves into agonizing emotional battles, nor does Li use his experiences to comment on social and political issues. Mao's Last Dancer is nonetheless a moving story, and considering the books dedicated to Cultural Revolution horrors, it's heartening to read that someone was able to dance his way through...