Predictable passages aside, Panetta offers a valuable portrait of how things get done in Washington—cautiously, like this...
Former Secretary of Defense and CIA Director Panetta tells all—well, some—about his life in politics.
“I have talked at length in these pages about wars,” writes the author toward the end. Indeed he has: His time in politics has run from Saigon to Syria, while his recent responsibilities have embraced such diverse matters as helping handle the return of American POW Bowe Bergdahl—a deal, Panetta writes, that he disapproved of—and weathering the David Petraeus affair. The memoir begins along familiar, formulaic lines: son of hardworking immigrants, drawn to office by a sense of “duty to country and a conviction that government could play a constructive role in the life of its citizens,” paying dues under the tough tutelage of Tip O’Neill and Jim Wright, and so on. Panetta is gentle on most of the politicians who have crossed his path, though it’s clear he reserves considerable disdain for former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and his “divisive tactics.” It is also clear that the author was at odds with President Barack Obama at many points. Though mildly framed (“achievements cannot allow leaders to become complacent”), his criticism has a bite. Many of the sharpest divergences turn on the question of leaving Iraq: “It was no secret that I had fought to keep it from ending this way,” he writes, and he pursued doing so “with reservations.” Still, Panetta’s criticisms are mild in the context of his overall defense of his former boss: As he writes, he finds it “amusing” that Obama is seen as an ideologue instead of as a “realist and pragmatist” who has overcome unnecessarily staunch opposition to “make important progress in many areas, from fighting terrorism to righting the economy.”
Predictable passages aside, Panetta offers a valuable portrait of how things get done in Washington—cautiously, like this memoir, and with exquisite calculation.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-59420-596-5
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
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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