Publishers Weekly
The five-term North Carolina senator and conservative icon describes his humble beginnings, his political principles, his rise to power and his friends among the powerful in this confident, if rarely surprising, memoir. Helms covers his small-town childhood, when "dad served as both chief of police and chief of the fire department"; his early days as a newspaperman, wartime navy recruiter and radio host; his brief time in 1950s Washington as a staffer for conservative senator Willis Smith; and his stint as a TV commentator in North Carolina during the 1960s, which made possible his first winning Senate campaign. The remainder of the book (about three-quarters of it) often defends Helms's unbending principles, his crusades against abortion and for school prayer, and his attempts to "derail the freight train of liberalism." Helms also sketches profiles of each president under whom he has served, saving special praise for Ronald Reagan, who "made clear where he stood," and for George W. Bush. Helms's controversial stance on race relations and his notorious "white hands" advertisement (from his 1990 reelection campaign) receive unapologetic defenses: "I have always counted many blacks among my friends," the senator says. He also explains his late-career conversion to the crusade against AIDS in Africa and his "genuine friendship" with the late liberal Paul Wellstone. Helms concludes as he began, denouncing abortion and affirming his strong faith in "the Christian religion" and "the Miracle of America," in terms that should delight religious conservatives, as well as anyone curious about the longevity, and the integrity, of a political survivor. (Sept.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Foreign Affairs
For five terms in the Senate, Jesse Helms was the dreaded "Senator No," whose unbending conservatism and prickly insistence on the prerogatives of the Senate complicated the lives of presidents and secretaries of state from both parties. In this memoir, Helms does more than refight old battles; he provides a window onto a worldview that continues to shape U.S. foreign and domestic policy. In retirement, Helms is unrepentant. The 1977 Panama Canal treaties, abortion, normalized relations with communist China, the Martin Luther King, Jr., national holiday: Helms did not like them then, and he does not like them now. Proud of his "conservative political philosophy," he still relishes combat with liberals — and he welcomes their hatred. Meanwhile, his loves are deep and enduring: his Christian faith, the values he imbibed in a small North Carolina country town, a United States of America that he believes has a special blessing from and responsibility to God. Readers of Helms' memoir will not find much original thought or sparkling prose; Helms prides himself on the application of traditional values and likes plain writing and plain speaking. But Helms' political philosophy remains a powerful force. For the foreseeable future, it is unlikely that any treaty Senator No would oppose can be ratified.
Library Journal
Helms, the conservative Republican senator from North Carolina for three decades, offers reminiscences of his small-town childhood, schooling, career in journalism, and life in politics, with portraits of Presidents from Nixon to the present Bush. He is neither introspective nor reflective, and little of the famous "Senator No" irascibility that made him despised by the Left is evident in this rather bland volume. Readers looking for a detailed autobiography will be disappointed, for the material is neither fleshed out nor fully organized and toward the end becomes a series of disconnected position papers on such topics as arts funding, Foggy Bottom, the press, Taiwan, etc. To give readers a clearer sense of his actual style, Helms would have done better to offer verbatim transcripts of his Senate speeches, but evidently he is trying for a warmer, fuzzier approach here. Friend and foe alike will agree that Helms has not wavered in his beliefs, but the former will find all of this familiar and the latter just might be surprised at how cordial he is, even toward opponents such as Bill Clinton. Recommended for libraries with large political collections.-Michael O. Eshleman, Kings Mills, OH Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Who is America's greatest enemy? Not bin Laden, not Hussein-no, the bad guys, suggests right-wing doyen Helms, are the liberal media and anyone of a liberal bent. Helms-once a sportswriter and TV executive before departing for politics' greener pastures-has nothing but scorn for the press, which coddles the nation's foes and otherwise impedes the spread of Republican values. Thus, "When it became apparent that [Panamanian president Manuel] Noriega was deeply involved in drug smuggling, gun running, and money laundering, even many in the liberal media concluded that he had to go." And thus, "Even though the liberal media tried to belittle [George W. Bush's] accomplishments, his record as Governor stood up to the scrutiny of critics." And so forth. Just as bad are the liberals in the Senate, who, Helms recalls, opposed him at every turn: the dupes who gave away the Panama Canal; the unholy triumvirate of Carol Moseley Braun (an African-American who opposed Helms's defense of the Confederate flag), Teddy Kennedy ("Without his opposition, we conservatives very likely would not have done so well in the past thirty years" and John Kerry ("a bit arrogant and overbearing," even though, Helms recalls, he sided with Kerry in calling for the Iran-Contra hearings). The digging at the presumed liberal elite aside, Helms's memoir is mostly a what-I-did-on-my-summer-vacation affair, a forced essay punctuated by all the usual stump-speech platitudes about how we owe God thanks for "letting us live in America" and how the "terrorists" in Iraq "believed we were soft and not willing to stand up to their cowardly attacks." There is almost nothing in Helms's pages of the hard work of doing politics in theSenate, with all the compromises and back-door deals that entails, and entirely too much of Helms's celebratory but insubstantial reminiscences of friendships with the likes of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and the sitting president. Self-serving, as a politician's memoir will be-and almost perfectly unrevealing.
