Deep reporting makes this a treasure trove for anyone interested in the blues and Vaughan’s place within popular music.
An oral biography that illuminates how far the inspiration of the virtuosic guitarist extends beyond music.
In the late 1980s, Stevie Ray Vaughan (1954-1990) was on the verge of drugging and working himself to death; he was forced to face the fact that if he didn’t change his ways, he wouldn’t last much longer. So he changed—his habits, perspective, relationships, routines, and music—and became as obsessed with living healthy and following 12-step precepts as he had been with scoring dope. He recorded an album with his older brother, Jimmie, his idol, one of the many musicians who had followed Stevie’s example by getting clean and sober. Sadly, when he had been sober for a few years, living happier and playing better than ever, he died in a helicopter crash following a concert, when the weather should not have permitted takeoff. He was just shy of 36 years old. Like co-author Paul’s previous oral history, One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band (2014), this account is exhaustive, drawing extensively from interviews with those who knew Stevie best—his brother, band mates, and the other musicians who witnessed his rise and fall—with the exception of his ex-wife. The narrative chronicles his lifelong obsession with his instrument, his transformation from Steve Vaughan the geek kid to Stevie Ray the guitar god, the ways in which his band was more like a family, and the reverence he displayed toward his idols. Paul and Aledort’s interviews also underscore Vaughan’s profound influence on other musicians, first as a blues revivalist who brought the music back into the mainstream and then as a testament to a sobriety that enriched his artistry. It’s a tragedy that the story had to end the way it did, but the authors show why the story still matters almost 30 years after his death.
Deep reporting makes this a treasure trove for anyone interested in the blues and Vaughan’s place within popular music.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-14283-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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