A Good Fight

From Barnes & Noble

The Barnes & Noble Review
In the spring of 1981 a would-be assassin shot President Reagan and his press secretary, James Brady, outside a Washington hotel, wounding Reagan in the chest and Brady in the head. A Good Fight weaves together Sarah Brady's dramatic recollection of the shooting, her husband's long and difficult recovery, and her own gradual transformation into a gun-control activist. The daughter of an FBI agent, she was an active Republican but not accustomed to the public stage. She tells of her romance with smart, funny, widely liked Jim Brady and the birth of their son Scott, who was just two when Sarah was rushed to the hospital to wait out her husband's five-hour brain surgery.

That was only the first of many operations and many setbacks, before the wheelchair-bound Brady could take up something like a normal life again. Meanwhile Sarah found herself having to manage, improvise, and deal with crises, as she had never imagined she could. And after finding a handgun lying casually on the seat of a friend's truck while Scott was in it, she was energized to join the fight for handgun control, of which the Bradys became the symbol.

Sarah made herself into an effective speaker and lobbyist. Her political education as the so-called Brady Bill struggled through Congress makes a great story in itself. She is able to laugh at some of her experiences, but she hasn't forgotten who was on her side and who wasn't, and she pulls no punches.

Sadly, just as the Bradys began a peaceful retirement by the Delaware shore, she learned that she had lung cancer. But do not think this is a grim book. It is full of hope and humor, honesty and courage. Sarah Brady is still fighting. (Stephanie Martin)

Stephanie Martin lives in Newton Centre, Massachusetts.

Washington Post

[Brady] presents a vision of marriage and family life that is recognizably human...the emotional thrust of the book is unmistakable, and devastating.

Booklist

offers an inspiring story of coping with personal challenges.

Library Journal

Not primarily a book about the politics of gun legislation. It is more about her inspiring determination and courage.

Reuters

a personal story of a woman's love for her husband and son and how their family pulled through the tough times.

Rocky Mountain News

Never feeling sorry for herself, Brady writes with humor, perceptiveness and modest prose. A Good Fight is a quiet, dramatic triumph.

Publishers Weekly

Readers get an intimate look at the events, both personal and professional, that shaped Brady's political career and the direction of U.S. gun legislation in this memoir of the lobbying life. She begins her story on March 30, 1981, when her husband, White House Press Secretary James Brady, was shot in an assassination attempt on President Reagan. His injury and recuperation, filled with close calls and setbacks, takes her on a journey that includes 15 years at the lobbying group Handgun Control, first as a volunteer, then as a board member and finally as its chair until 1996. Brady gives a detailed, suspenseful account of the struggle to pass the Brady bill, a handgun control law finally signed in 1993. Readers will take special interest in her recollections of high-profile politicians. Though she doesn't sling mud, Brady openly expresses her frustration with those who hindered the bill. A lifelong Republican (and an admirer of Reagan), Brady became disillusioned when Bush the elder effectively blocked passage of the bill, and she endorsed Clinton in 1992. Writing in unpretentious prose, she leads the reader from one fight to the next without stopping to feel sorry for herself even in the midst of husband's disability and her own current battle with lung cancer. The book will likely appeal to political enthusiasts and ardent gun-control supporters, and, though Brady is neither as iconoclastic nor as captivating a writer as Katharine Graham, fans of Graham's Personal History may enjoy this story of a determined woman in a male-dominated Washington. 8 pages b&w photos not seen by PW. (May) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

A Good Fight was needed to set rules for U.S. handgun purchases; Jim Brady, his wife, Sarah, and many others campaigned for this after 1981, the year he suffered severe lifetime disabilities from a bullet in the head during the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan. The Bradys and their team got support from some Senators and Congress members; after seven years of hard work, the Brady bill became law. Since then the National Rifle Association has tried to erode it. The author, without self-pity, concludes the book with details of her personal battle against advanced lung cancer, following decades of smoking. Narrator Laura Hicks is efficient; in places her voice needs softening. Even Brady's lower voice, as she reads the introduction, sounds rough. These quibbles aside, believers in reasonable handgun control will want to hear this story. Recommended for popular biography collections.-Gordon Blackwell, Eastchester, NY Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Booknews

Brady's autobiography centers on one pivotal event<-->the March 31, 1980 attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, the same shooting that disabled her husband. She describes their lives before and after the shooting, emphasizing how the unexpected can change the life-course of an entire family. She specifically details her activities as an anti-gun activist, and reacts to her recent cancer diagnosis. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Kirkus Reviews

The spirited autobiography of the noted gun-control advocate and onetime Republican loyalist. A good fight, indeed: Brady emerges from these pages as nothing if not a scrapper, unwilling to give in to the raft of bad luck that's been her lot. First, of course, there was the shooting of her husband Jim, brain-damaged and confined to a wheelchair, thanks to would-be presidential assassin John Hinckley. Second was the slow discovery that their young son Scott suffered from sensory integration problems, which made him "something of a handful, to put it mildly." Third, and one of the most affecting moments of Brady's narrative, was her long and ongoing battle against lung cancer, brought on, she admits, by years of smoking and a once-insurmountable addiction to tobacco. Chapter by chapter, she meets all these tests head-on, writing of her work in agitating for national gun-control legislation, in helping Scott and Jim go about the difficult business of daily life, and of wrestling with her own doubts and shortcomings. Her mood is largely cheerful and even homey ("We always have beef for Christmas dinner"), though she fires off a few zingers here and there ("Charlton Heston, who later would become my chief adversary . . . struck me-I remember it vividly-as a pompous ass"). Brady tends toward platitude, confining her reflections on matters such as the Hinckley attempt to easily digested morsels: "God only knows what demons drove him to do what he did." But that's beside the point, and by the end, all but the most cynical reader will be rooting for Brady-and, likely, for the causes she espouses. Self-aware and committed, Brady offers an extended pep talk for women facing crises of their own, aswell as a personal memoir-and it works on both levels.