If crucifixions and ferocious street fighting no longer characterize contemporary politics, Plutarch’s rivalrous,...
The estimable Greek historian depicts ancient Rome’s violent politics.
Biographer and philosopher Plutarch (46-120 C.E.) aimed to reveal “the manifestations of a man’s soul” in his Parallel Lives, portrayals of major Greek and Roman historical figures. Set beside one another, these biographies, Plutarch hoped, would edify readers who sought moral self-improvement. From that work, classicist Romm (Classics/Bard Coll.; Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero, 2014, etc.) has selected five Roman lives: military general Pompey; lawyer and orator Cicero; Caesar, central to all of these lives; his treacherous adversary Brutus; and his supporter Antony, a vainly handsome man “of princely dignity.” These biographies, Romm believes, offer “an immersion in the events of the classical past and an encounter with its greatest personalities.” An introduction by noted classical scholar Mary Beard and informative footnotes help to fill in that sense of the past, and a felicitous translation by Mensch makes Plutarch’s prose lively and accessible. The biographies are thrillingly dramatic, as Plutarch recounts savage battles, bloody betrayals, and constant political upheaval. Central to that upheaval was the murder of Caesar, after he declared himself “Dictator for Life,” by a cadre assembled by Brutus. After arrogantly reproaching petitioners, Caesar found himself surrounded by murderers. “Whichever way he turned he met with blows aimed at his face and eyes, and was driven here and there like a wild beast,” Plutarch wrote, “trapped in everyone’s hands.” Caesar was felled with 23 stab wounds, and some of the assassins themselves were wounded in the melee. Carried out in the name of liberation from Caesar’s tyrannical rule, the killing had the opposite effect, making the populace worship Caesar “as a god” and turn against the conspirators. Among other dramatically intense scenes, Cleopatra’s inconsolable grief after Antony’s death and her suicide by asp bite stand out.
If crucifixions and ferocious street fighting no longer characterize contemporary politics, Plutarch’s rivalrous, “inglorious” world in discomfiting ways echoes through our own time.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-393-29282-4
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
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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