A spaceman delivers an overlong chronicle of his adventures that may prove engaging to ardent space fans.
An astronaut’s memoir from “a small-town boy from Nebraska—nothing special, just an ordinary American.”
Retired astronaut Anderson spent more than 38 hours spacewalking and five months on the International Space Station (“ISS”—acronyms proliferate at NASA and in his book). The athletic former Boy Scout from Nebraska, previously employed as an engineer at the Johnson Space Center, finally landed the coveted job as astronaut after 15 years of annual applications. After his acceptance, Anderson underwent rigorous preparation in jets, on mountainside treks, and in prolonged periods underwater. He learned Russian and trained in Star City, located outside Moscow, in order to work on the ISS. The stressful, rigid toil paid off, and the author delivers graphic descriptions of the sensations experienced during liftoff into space and life in orbit, including annoyances that were expressed perhaps a bit too freely to colleagues on Earth. He was not listed for future long-duration flights. Better were conversations in space with his wife and children who, throughout the book, receive heartfelt expressions of his enduring love. The author also frequently registers his Christian faith. Some NASA arcana, like mission commemorative patches, will interest true space buffs, and Anderson seems eager to answer predictable questions regarding bodily functions in space. He announces, more than once, his pride in the “incredible opportunities” to “poop in four different spacecraft!” He goes into considerable detail about that opportunity and natural human bowel movements in general. Indeed, the author is prideful in several areas, including his modesty and humanity in the face of stresses and dangers. Throughout, Anderson seeks to maintain an upbeat tone. However, underneath the brave bonhomie, there is occasional snarky, artificial gravitas, and the geniality sours just a bit.
A spaceman delivers an overlong chronicle of his adventures that may prove engaging to ardent space fans.Pub Date: June 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8032-6282-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
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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