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MOUNTAIN, GET OUT OF MY WAY

LIFE LESSONS AND LEARNED TRUTHS

Straight from the heart and the boob tube, Montel's memoir offers simplistic, ``as seen on TV'' solutions to complex problems. Nationally syndicated talk show personality Williams traces our contemporary social problems to the removal of God from public schools. This, he contends, ``marks the beginning of the deterioration of the American family, and without family this country has just spun out of control.'' When young people no longer attend church or believe in God, then money becomes their god. And in their pursuit of money, insists Williams, morality is cast aside. This domino theory ignores the socioeconomic factors that have led to the dissolution of the family, and the fact that church attendance is actually on the upswing, particularly in the inner city. One can hardly argue, though, with Williams's forthright solutions, despite their simplicity. He proposes that the ills of society be remedied with his three R's: restraint, responsibility and respect. Young people need to think about the consequences of their actions, to assume responsibility for their actions, and to regard one another with respect. The Holy Host, unfortunately, undermines his message with selective true confessions. He was clearly not there for his first wife and his two older daughters. Though he takes responsibility for ``messing up'' (``at home, I certainly wasn't practicing what I was preaching''), the reader becomes disillusioned with the messenger. And now, when he supposedly does have his life together, with a new wife and two more children, one wonders just how much time he can devote to his family (or to God) while ``working twelve to fourteen hours a day, seven days a week.'' Likely to appeal to Montel fans and other ``gawk show'' devotees, Mountain, Get Out of My Way won't make the earth move.*justify no* Straight from the heart and the boob tube, Montel's memoir offers simplistic, ``as seen on TV'' solutions to complex problems. Nationally syndicated talk show personality Williams traces our contemporary social problems to the removal of God from public schools. This, he contends, ``marks the beginning of the deterioration of the American family, and without family this country has just spun out of control.'' When young people no longer attend church or believe in God, then money becomes their god. And in their pursuit of money, insists Williams, morality is cast aside. This domino theory ignores the socioeconomic factors that have led to the dissolution of the family, and the fact that church attendance is actually on the upswing, particularly in the inner city. One can hardly argue, though, with Williams's forthright solutions, despite their simplicity. He proposes that the ills of society be remedied with his three R's: restraint, responsibility and respect. Young people need to think about the consequences of their actions, to assume responsibility for their actions, and to regard one another with respect. The Holy Host, unfortunately, undermines his message with selective true confessions. He was clearly not there for his first wife and his two older daughters. Though he takes responsibility for ``messing up'' (``at home, I certainly wasn't practicing what I was preaching''), the reader becomes disillusioned with the messenger. And now, when he supposedly does have his life together, with a new wife and two more children, one wonders just how much time he can devote to his family (or to God) while ``working twelve to fourteen hours a day, seven days a week.'' Likely to appeal to Montel fans and other ``gawk show'' devotees, Mountain, Get Out of My Way won't make the earth move.*justify no* Straight from the heart and the boob tube, Montel's memoir offers simplistic, ``as seen on TV'' solutions to complex problems. Nationally syndicated talk show personality Williams traces our contemporary social problems to the removal of God from public schools. This, he contends, ``marks the beginning of the deterioration of the American family, and without family this country has just spun out of control.'' When young people no longer attend church or believe in God, then money becomes their god. And in their pursuit of money, insists Williams, morality is cast aside. This domino theory ignores the socioeconomic factors that have led to the dissolution of the family, and the fact that church attendance is actually on the upswing, particularly in the inner city. One can hardly argue, though, with Williams's forthright solutions, despite their simplicity. He proposes that the ills of society be remedied with his three R's: restraint, responsibility and respect. Young people need to think about the consequences of their actions, to assume responsibility for their actions, and to regard one another with respect. The Holy Host, unfortunately, undermines his message with selective true confessions. He was clearly not there for his first wife and his two older daughters. Though he takes responsibility for ``messing up'' (``at home, I certainly wasn't practicing what I was preaching''), the reader becomes disillusioned with the messenger. And now, when he supposedly does have his life together, with a new wife and two more children, one wonders just how much time he can devote to his family (or to God) while ``working twelve to fourteen hours a day, seven days a week.'' Likely to appeal to Montel fans and other ``gawk show'' devotees, Mountain, Get Out of My Way won't make the earth move.*justify no* Straight from the heart and the boob tube, Montel's memoir offers simplistic, ``as seen on TV'' solutions to complex problems. Nationally syndicated talk show personality Williams traces our contemporary social problems to the removal of God from public schools. This, he contends, ``marks the beginning of the deterioration of the American family, and without family this country has just spun out of control.'' When young people no longer attend church or believe in God, then money becomes their god. And in their pursuit of money, insists Williams, morality is cast aside. This domino theory ignores the socioeconomic factors that have led to the dissolution of the family, and the fact that church attendance is actually on the upswing, particularly in the inner city. One can hardly argue, though, with Williams's forthright solutions, despite their simplicity. He proposes that the ills of society be remedied with his three R's: restraint, responsibility and respect. Young people need to think about the consequences of their actions, to assume responsibility for their actions, and to regard one another with respect. The Holy Host, unfortunately, undermines his message with selective true confessions. He was clearly not there for his first wife and his two older daughters. Though he takes responsibility for ``messing up'' (``at home, I certainly wasn't practicing what I was preaching''), the reader becomes disillusioned with the messenger. And now, when he supposedly does have his life together, with a new wife and two more children, one wonders just how much time he can devote to his family (or to God) while ``working twelve to fourteen hours a day, seven days a week.'' Likely to appeal to Montel fans and other ``gawk show'' devotees, Mountain, Get Out

Pub Date: March 13, 1996

ISBN: 0-446-51907-3

Page Count: 224

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1996

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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

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WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR

A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...

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  • Pulitzer Prize Finalist

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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