Very likely the last word on the late prime minister, whose legacy is still playing out in Britain today.
The third installment in Moore’s densely packed, endlessly revealing life of the Iron Lady.
Continuing a story that, though skillfully told, runs very long, Moore begins in the late spring of 1987, when Margaret Thatcher has just won her third victory in the general election. Electoral contests in Britain, he reminds us, are “parliamentary, not presidential, and are based on parties, not individual leaders.” Nevertheless, it is indisputable that Thatcher won on the strength of steely charisma and achievements that lifted British spirits, from overseeing the end of a long recession to securing victory in the Falklands War. Things were vastly different in 1990, when British voters took an overwhelmingly different view of her: They were, Moore writes, “unimpressed by divisions over Europe, the return of double-digit inflation and the perceived injustices of the poll tax.” Worse yet, Thatcher had become personally unpopular as well, seen as someone who had simply stopped listening to the people. When she entered her third term, her approval rating was 52%, but at the end, it was below 33%. Spy scandals and the morale-sapping conflict in Northern Ireland did not help matters. Engineered out of the leadership of the Conservative Party by challengers such as John Major and Michael Heseltine, Thatcher was not shy about nursing grudges, considering Major to be “a nice, useless man, who cannot lead.” Moore shows that her last years in office were not without their own accomplishments, including cementing a renewed relationship with the United States and helping bring about the fall of the Soviet Union and an end to the Cold War. Nonetheless, the author also points to the failures of Thatcher’s brand of libertarianism, characterized by the mantra “diffuse, disperse, devolve.” That strain of politics has lingering effects in a Conservative Party still tinged with Thatcherism, with such results as Brexit and the specter of a U.K. that will perhaps soon be disunited.
Very likely the last word on the late prime minister, whose legacy is still playing out in Britain today.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-101-94720-3
Page Count: 880
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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