Historians will wince at some of the hyperbole and speculative conclusions, but Kennedy junkies will gobble it up.
First of a projected two volumes, pulling together in sometimes mind-numbing detail the lives of the men in a family that dominated the American imagination during the last half of the 20th century.
Leamer (The Kennedy Women, 1994, etc.) offers a relatively evenhanded although ultimately admiring examination of the relationships among Joseph Kennedy and his four sons: Joe Jr. (WWII hero, killed in action), Jack (president, assassinated), Bobby (attorney general and senator from New York, assassinated) and Teddy (baby of the family and longtime senator from Massachusetts, plagued by scandal). All the old questions are here, but so are the old answers, albeit amplified with new documents and interviews. Did Joe Sr. make money from bootlegging liquor? Probably. Did he buy his son Jack the presidency? Not really, although he certainly spent a lot of money and called in many favors. Was Jack the swordsman that he was reputed to be? Even more so. Not exactly breaking news, but by bundling the lives of the Kennedy men together and emphasizing family influences, Leamer is able to clarify some of the seeming contradictions in their personal and political acts. For instance, Joe Sr. single-mindedly groomed his sons for public lives, but he was also a loving and supportive father. President Kennedy admired nothing more than physical and moral courage, but often waffled on taking a stand if the political stakes were high. Attorney General Kennedy’s sometimes vicious handling of colleagues on behalf of his brother contrasted with his real concern for the suffering of other human beings. In the survey of JFK’s presidency, the Cuba crises and the so-called mob connections receive a considerable share of attention, the civil-rights movement perhaps not as much as it deserves. This hefty tome ends with JFK’s funeral, with much of Bob and Ted’s stories still to come.
Historians will wince at some of the hyperbole and speculative conclusions, but Kennedy junkies will gobble it up.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2001
ISBN: 0-688-16315-7
Page Count: 880
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2001
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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