New light is shed on both architects in this absorbing, well-organized, delightfully told story.
An in-depth portrait of two “grand men of American architecture.”
The prolific Howard (Mr. and Mrs. Madison’s War: America’s First Couple and the War of 1812, 2012, etc.) offers up another sterling book of popular history, one about the “peculiar calculus” of the “flint and steel” friendship between two great architects of the 20th century, Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) and Philip Johnson (1906-2005). Fierce rivals for nearly 30 years, they were the “yin and the yang, in love and in hate, the positive and the negative charges that gave architecture its compass.” Both could be imperious, inspiring, trivial, and proud. Wright was mostly a cantankerous coot. He was the unreformed romantic, Johnson the modernist who still liked the classical. Howard starts by nicely summarizing the early careers of his subjects. Wright’s career early on had been dramatic and successful, but in the 1930s, he was languishing. In 1931, Johnson wanted Wright’s work represented in a traveling Museum of Modern Art show he was organizing. Wright agreed but later withdrew; his letter included a snide remark about Johnson’s homosexuality. Only after Lewis Mumford interceded did Wright capitulate. The show helped resuscitate Wright’s career. In 1935, he designed an iconic home for a wealthy client in Pennsylvania: Fallingwater; Johnson “always spoke grudgingly of [it].” They continued to compete: Wright did the Guggenheim Museum, Johnson did the Seagram Building. Howard describes them as a “dog and a cat forced to share the same home.” In 1949, Johnson finished his most iconic structure, the Glass House, as something of a rebuttal to Wright’s now-famous “waterfall cottage,” as Wright called it. Minimalist and modern, Johnson’s own residence outside New Haven was made of glass and framing, “akin to a plain black frame on a photograph.” Over time, Johnson came to recognize the value of their “odd alliance,” finally admitting Wright was the greater architect.
New light is shed on both architects in this absorbing, well-organized, delightfully told story.Pub Date: May 24, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62040-375-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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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