Readers who enjoy English history will be happy to have this in their libraries.
A series of biographies of the women connected to Cliveden, the house made famous in the Profumo affair.
The first, Anna Maria (1642-1702), was widowed when her lover, the Duke of Buckingham, killed her husband in a duel in 1668. Scandal was a way of life in Restoration England, and Anna Maria eventually moved into Buckingham’s London home—with him and his wife. By the time Cliveden was completed, they had separated. Elizabeth Villiers, a cousin to Buckingham, was educated with two of James II’s daughters, Mary and Anne. Elizabeth accompanied Mary when she married William of Orange and promptly had an affair with him. After Queen Mary’s death, William granted Irish estates to Elizabeth that made her the richest woman in England, which made for a convenient marriage to the Earl of Orkney and life at Cliveden. Orkney’s heir leased the property to Frederick, Prince of Wales, and his successful marriage to Augusta of Saxe Gotha proved to be a contrast to the rigidity of the court. Harriet, raised at Castle Howard and a great friend of Queen Victoria, married the even wealthier Duke of Sutherland. Together, they created a calm retreat at Cliveden where Victoria often came for walks on the grounds. Harriet was also a prolific political and social campaigner, and she fought against slavery in the United States. Throughout its history, Cliveden was a haven for great minds, and famous guests were the norm for all the women of Cliveden. Nancy Astor (1879-1964) was an acerbic, quick-tempered woman. Like her predecessors, she changed conceptions of female power and served as a member of Parliament for 25 years. She made Cliveden a symbol of highly politicized forms of power, class and ideology. In her debut book, Livingstone ably avoids tabloidlike gossip to profile five remarkable women, and she provides a helpful cast of characters at the beginning of the story.
Readers who enjoy English history will be happy to have this in their libraries.Pub Date: June 14, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-39207-4
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2016
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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