Slight, sometimes debatable but thoroughly well written: a good starting point for those who want to brush up on why...
A slender, interpretation-laden biography of the first president.
George Washington poses certain contradictions for a historian, as the prolific Johnson (Art: A New History, 2003, etc.) very gamely allows. For one thing, though he kept virtually every scrap of paper that came under his eye, carting a sizable archive with him even in the thick of the Revolutionary War, and was as careful a self-chronicler as any subsequent chief executive, Washington was also famously guarded about what he revealed of himself. An august and confident leader, he was also responsible for a disastrous episode that led directly to the worldwide Seven Years War. He despised slavery but did not press the point while he was in a position to do so. Some of his contemporaries—his vice president, John Adams, among them—thought him thick and unpresidential, to which Johnson responds that Washington was a fine actor: he knew how to by-God a lieutenant into submission, and “he liked to play the Old Man card when needed.” He professed a little false modesty, lived a little better than he could afford to and was perhaps a little too wedded to his time’s what’s-in-for-me ethic. But, Johnson writes, Washington was also indisputably if not entirely selflessly devoted to the cause of an independent American nation. Johnson is sometimes unconvincing when he confronts contradiction head-on and attempts to reconcile it; he notes, for instance, that Washington was a deist, disinclined to pay much attention to matters of God (“In his twenty volumes of correspondence there is not a single mention of Christ”), yet asserts, in keeping with his conservative bent, that “the notion that the First Amendment would be twisted into an instrument to prohibit the traditional practices of Christianity would have horrified him”—though probably not to the point, given what we know of him, that Washington would have inserted an “under God” clause into the national pledge.
Slight, sometimes debatable but thoroughly well written: a good starting point for those who want to brush up on why Washington matters all these years later.Pub Date: June 2, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-075365-X
Page Count: 144
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
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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