Harvey Milk as seen through fresh, highly knowledgeable eyes.
A new biography of the controversial and groundbreaking Harvey Milk (1930-1978).
In this latest installment of the publisher’s Jewish Lives series, LGBT historian Faderman (The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle, 2015, etc.) focuses on one of the most revolutionary West Coast gay politicians of the 20th century. Born to a Jewish family, Milk struggled to find his place in the society that surrounded him, regardless of where he lived and went to school. As the author writes, “Harvey was steeped in Jewishness as a child….But his heart was not in it. He later claimed that he rejected religion because when he was twelve years old he ‘found out that religion was phony or hypocritical.’ ” Milk’s ability to see things as they were—to see through the protective membranes of societal and cultural preconceptions—is what set him apart as a deeply insightful politician. He clearly identified the major issues in his community and addressed them head-on. Faderman deftly navigates us through Milk’s incredible journey, from his days exploring the Navy’s gay haven to his experience in the early 1970s in New York scrapping pennies to pay the rent on his Greenwich Village apartment to his arrival to California, where he quickly became a staple in the Castro District, the notoriously gay neighborhood in San Francisco. The author naturally devotes much of the text to Milk’s political accomplishments, including his work against the discriminatory Proposition 6, voter registration drives, and, above all, being the first openly gay man elected as city supervisor. Though Milk’s story is well-known, Faderman does a fantastic job at reanimating a story that reminds us that people can be truly tolerant—with the exception of the few—and that, with will (not money), anyone can effect change.
Harvey Milk as seen through fresh, highly knowledgeable eyes.Pub Date: May 22, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-300-22261-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
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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