Of particular interest to aviation buffs, but valuable for anyone interested in how a life lived with integrity prepares a...
The hero pilot who made the successful emergency landing in the Hudson River tells his story, assisted by bestselling author Zaslow (The Girls from Ames, 2009, etc.).
On Jan. 15, 2009, about 95 seconds after takeoff, US Airways Flight 1549 struck a flock of geese, knocking out both engines. Less than four minutes later the plane was floating in the Hudson with all aboard alive and largely uninjured thanks to the cool decision-making of Captain “Sully” Sullenberger. In countless public appearances since the incident, Sullenberger has emerged as an appealingly modest, straightforward guy, a demeanor maintained here in his easygoing, no-frills account of his Texas boyhood, his early infatuation with flying, his years at the Air Force Academy, his peacetime military career and his experiences as a commercial pilot, where safety procedures became somewhat of a specialty. The author recalls lessons learned from his parents, instructors, colleagues, his fitness instructor wife and his two adopted daughters, all of whom contributed to preparing him to handle the dire emergency that made him famous. Careful to credit his fellow crew members, especially First Officer Jeff Skiles, Sullenberger rejects the “hero” label, reserving that for folks who place themselves consciously in danger, rather than for those who have a crisis thrust upon them. The author insists he successfully managed the situation because of a decision made many years ago about the kind of person he wished to be. He claims to have summoned a courage and sense of responsibility common to many other ordinary people faced with extraordinary circumstances. Sullenberger also addresses the dramatic water rescue and his post-flight celebrity, and he answers some of the many moving messages he received. He attributes much of the media attention to timing. People battered by foreclosures, hammered with job losses and stung by decimated savings accounts looked to the story of Flight 1549 and saw that there are “ways out of the tightest spots.”
Of particular interest to aviation buffs, but valuable for anyone interested in how a life lived with integrity prepares a man for the ultimate challenge.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-06-192468-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
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