The biographer of the Brooklyn Bridge and the Panama Canal has written a marvelous book, now, about the making of an exceptional being—and nothing that has appeared before, including Edmund Morris' recent The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, diminishes its interest or freshness or emotional force. Indeed, those familiar with the story of the puny, sickly boy who made himself over by will power alone have the most to look forward to. That is not, for one thing, what McCullough found in the thousands of Roosevelt family letters. But he does not merely offer another, more complex and fine-tuned interpretation; he has embedded it in the true-life equivalent of a Russian novel of relations and generations, of mood and moment (whence those "mornings on horseback" at Oyster Bay) and shaded characterization. Here is Theodore Roosevelt, Sr.—"a great bearded figure of a man. . . readily touched by the sufferings of others." New York gentleman; newsboys' friend; foe of venal politicians. His forever-Southern, forever-young wife Mittie, "Little Mama"—whose heroic tales conveyed "a sense of bloodline kinship with real-life men of action." Her brother James Bulloch—builder of the celebrated Confederate raider Alabama, no less admirable to his proUnion nephew. Older sister Bamie, "Papa's pet"—plain, stooped, bright, absolutely dependable. Responsible, as a tiny, stricken child, for the family conviction "that physical well-being and mental outlook are directly correlated." Younger brother Elliott—serene, kind-hearted; long the bigger of the two, and the better athlete. (His "strange seizures," beginning at 14, will reverse their positions; and with Ellie's drinking and descent, one awaits with pity and dread the birth of his daughter Eleanor.) And frail, asthmatic, intent, untiring "Teedie." McCullough devotes a chapter to childhood asthma—the total, terrifying agony, the exuberance afterward; the immediate, "exciting" family response, especially in privileged circumstances; the timing of the attacks—in TR's case, on Saturday nights, gaining him joyful Sundays out-of-doors with Papa; the sense of power and. with it, a sense that "life is quite literally a battle." At 13, TR acquires a gun and a pair of glasses; through an idyllic winter in Egypt, he shoots and stuffs birds; there are no asthmatic attacks. Ellie's seizures begin—TR is pulling ahead academically. He goes off to Harvard, "his first solo venture into the world," still spindly—despite his bodybuilding exercises—and still squeaky-voiced. The asthma all but vanishes. There follows: his father's political defeat (to be avenged?), and his death; TR's second, newly-popular two years at Harvard, capped by the conquest of "bewitching," Mittie-like Alice Lee; his high-charged political novitiate, and sobering introduction (by Samuel Gompers) to poverty; two sudden, terrible deaths—Mama's and Alice's; work (and silence); the distressing nomination of Blaine, whom TR will nonetheless support, knowing his father would have done differently. The book culminates, in the "Bad Land years," with his discovery of the cowboy—whose code was akin to the family code and who could also deal with death. His body fills out, his voice deepens, his speech takes on eloquence; he doesn't seem surprised when an acquaintance predicts that he'll become President. All of McCullough's considerable gifts—as scholar, analyst, dramatist—are focused on an inexhaustible subject.a
Pub Date: June 22, 1981
ISBN: 0671447548
Page Count: 486
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1981
IN THE NEWS
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
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