An amiably witty book about sailing that will appeal as strongly to the uninitiated as to the addicted.
In a new edition of a book first published in 1999, the National Book Award–winning author recalls a “watershed” year in the early 1990s when he seriously took up sailing, a sport he had abandoned when he was in his 20s.
At the time, Philbrick (Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution, 2016, etc.) was a stay-at-home dad working on a book about Nantucket, where he and his wife and two kids lived, while his old, “dirt-encrusted” Sunfish, the “VW bug” of sailboats, leaned against the house. Deciding to spiff it up and get back on the water, the author set a goal of competing in the 1993 Sunfish North Americans, to be held the following July “on a man-made lake in Springfield, Illinois.” To get back in shape, Philbrick hauled the boat to one after another of Nantucket's many ponds and, during the winter, rented a boat to compete in a regatta in Florida. The narrative is wryly honest. The author performed respectably in Florida and Illinois, but he didn’t blow the competition away in any last-minute comebacks. Instead, he took pleasure—and pain—in the experiences of sailing on a regular basis. He describes with infectious joy the experience of catching a stray bit of wind or surging over the waves in a harbor, and he relays with astonishment the luck he feels at having survived some questionable sailing choices. Since much of his sailing was done under adverse conditions—in water so cold that he had to break the ice to sail or in air so still that races were postponed because boats couldn't move—readers will feel lucky to share the experiences vicariously. The author keeps his chapters short and punchy, and his obscure sailing terminology to a minimum, while revealing much about his connection to a supportive if sometimes-skeptical family.
An amiably witty book about sailing that will appeal as strongly to the uninitiated as to the addicted.Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-14-313209-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
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
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
