A magnificent account, swift and compelling, of obsession, scholarship, and, ultimately, philanthropy of the first...
The conception, gestation, and birth of the world’s most comprehensive and authoritative dictionary.
Winchester (Krakatoa, p. 220, etc.) returns to territory he first excavated in The Professor and the Madman (1998), which told the stories of OED editor James Murray and his brilliant assistant, William Chester Minor, incarcerated for murder and madness. Here, the author deals only briefly with Minor near the end and focuses instead on the brilliant, dedicated, even obsessed men and women who created the dictionary despite war and illness, insanity and insolvency, and the sometimes vicious politics of publishing and scholarship. Winchester begins in 1928 as the final pages were published of a work that began with the volume A to Ant in 1884. Many notable contributors never lived to see the completed dictionary, but many others attended the grand celebratory dinner, among them J.R.R. Tolkien, who in 1919 had worked on the project and was remembered for his struggles with the difficult word “walrus.” (Later, he would help the OED define “hobbit.”) Winchester pauses for a few chapters to remind us of the story of the English language—remember those pesky Angles, Saxons and Jutes?—and to sketch the history of dictionaries. By the third chapter, we meet the tale’s giant: James Murray, who signed on as editor in 1879 and died in 1915 while working on T. Winchester also profiles gadflies Benjamin Jowett, and Philip Lyttelton Gell, who harried the deliberate and meticulous Murray. Most interesting, of course, are the flotsam and jetsam that the author displays. “Zyxt” is the final word in the dictionary; “black” took three months of nonstop work; the first installment sold for 12 shillings and 6 pence; editor Henry Bradley could read a book upside down; the next published edition may run to 40 volumes.
A magnificent account, swift and compelling, of obsession, scholarship, and, ultimately, philanthropy of the first magnitude. (30 b&w illustrations, not seen)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-19-860702-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2003
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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