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Rating:  Summary: a strong voice, a compelling life story Review: Janet Langhart Cohen's life story will draw differing reactions from readers. One viewpoint expressed in some of the previous reviews is that she was fortunate to advance, through her light-skinned good looks, into the corridors of wealth and influence. Yet Cohen does still strongly identify herself with black experiences and causes.
An intelligent, ambitious woman, extremely self-possessed and poised, Cohen spent her childhood years in a housing project in Indiana, raised by her single mother. A bevy of relatives loved and influenced Cohen as well. In early adulthood she discovered that she had a true talent for interviewing people, and began her career as a broadcast journalist.
Despite the conventional and sometimes rather stilted quality of the prose, Cohen's own voice emerges in this book, telling her remarkable story in a compelling way that keeps the reader turning pages. Recommended.
Rating:  Summary: Bravo! Janet! Review: for having the courage to tell your story about your rise from the projects of Indianapolis to being a member of a power elite. Yours is a story of struggle, guts and determination to make a name for yourself. Your interracial marriages did create a lot of controversy in the elite, for they don't accept the idea of black/biracial black women marrying elite, upper class nonblack men such as your husband.
You made a name for yourself in modeling early on. I have to give it to you for having kept your face and figure, but that's not all. You have a mind of your own that sometimes conflict with the prevailing views of the establishment, which isn't too accepting of smart, assertive women like you. But then again times has changed.
All I have say is that you rose above it all.
Rating:  Summary: A Frank Look at a Fascinating Life Review: Janet Langhart Cohen's book is illuminating both for its commentary about American society and its changes, as well as her reflections upon her life and circumstances surrounding that life. I was enormously impressed by her work with the military and their families when her husband was Secretary of Defense. She has taken all times of her life, both good and bad, learned from them and made the best of life. She's an impressive person, with depth and compassion.
Rating:  Summary: A Frank Look at a Fascinating Life Review: Janet Langhart Cohen's book is illuminating both for its commentary about American society and its changes, as well as her reflections upon her life and circumstances surrounding that life. I was enormously impressed by her work with the military and their families when her husband was Secretary of Defense. She has taken all times of her life, both good and bad, learned from them and made the best of life. She's an impressive person, with depth and compassion.
Rating:  Summary: A Dream Fulfilled Review: Janet Langhart Cohen's story is the story of one woman's successful struggle to overcome the racial divide that has separated America into two nations. She was born at the "right time" and came of age as the Civil Rights Movement was beginning to make its demands and have its voices heard. She was not handed success on a silver platter. Her rage, albeit tempered by age, experience and success, is never far from her heart or mind, nor should it be.Yet Mrs Cohen's story is much more than the fulfillment of one person's dream - it represents a significant step in fulfilling Dr. King's dream for all Americans which he articulated from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in August 1963. We have a long way to go, but Janet Cohen's story, and the fact it was achieved - and is being lived -- largely under the radar screen, itself sends a message of hope and encouragement that we are making progress in achieving the Constitution's mission of forming "a more perfect union."
Rating:  Summary: Janet, you did a great job Review: Janet's book is very excellent, she deserves a standing ovation for a book well written. This book is so interesting and captivating. This is the first time, i have seen someone so clear-cut honest. Janet Cohen is a beautiful woman who deserved all the good things in life. She has broken down racial barriers like Oprah to become of the greatest African-Americans of this era. I strongly recommend this book to people who haven't read it.
Rating:  Summary: Amazing - Her Own Autobiography Makes Her So Unlikeable! Review: This book is so mistitled on two accounts. First, I would agree with the reviewer below; "From Rage to Reason" was for me, too, "From Rage to Disgust." How can anyone who is writing their OWN story come off so nauseatingly unlikeable? The more you read, the more arrogant, self-centered, and disengenuous Janet Langhart Cohen becomes. Maybe it should be "From Rage to Sickenly Manipulative." Second, this is clearly not a book about "My Life in Two Americas." Her story is simply not about the experience of being black in America. Forget that she's white skinned with caucasain features, she is astonishingly and uniquely beautiful. Perhaps, in her case, the two Americas could more adequately be described as the "few privileged with astounding beauty and the rest of us ordinary-looking people." Now, I have a great admiration for beauty and nothing against a woman using it to her best advantage; we should all put our assets to their best use. But this woman has done nothing to help the plight, the image, the future hopes and dreams of anyone but herself. As the old saying goes, for some women beauty is the biggest disadvantage because they have no need or motivation to develope any skills beyond dressing well and flirting when necessary. Janet Cohen has not proved that race has been a disadvantage for her, only that beauty paired with selfish ambition can produce a hollow, grating, selfish personality. Her "blackness" is used as a convenient excuse when she doesn't get her way or people don't like. People don't like her, obviously, because she is unlikeable. This woman is a horrible role model for any young woman, black, white, or whatever.
Rating:  Summary: startling Review: This is an autobiography so you'd expect Janet Cohen to present herself in a good light. She doesn't. Instead Cohen comes off as a very bitter, self absorbed woman who doesn't seem to have learned anything over the years.
Rating:  Summary: From Rage to Disgust Review: This is the story of a poor African-American girl whose Caucasian features, physical beauty and mindless ambition allowed her to escape her social class and race to become a weather-girl in Chicago, runway model, successful celebrity hob-nobber, wife to corrupt Secretary of Defense William Cohen (her third husband), and a member of the power-elite...with whom she shares a complete lack of concern for the plight of the oppressed. She seems thrilled that she is now one of "them". The real woman behind the text, who alleges outrage at the way blacks are treated in this country and recounts her struggles with racism until she finally became white, is an Ivana Trump clone with some pseudo-leftist political rhetoric thrown on top. She is a plastic non-person who uses the power she acquired from her sheepish husband to engage in fits of self-aggrandizing onanism. But other than that, it's not a bad book.
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