This compact biography should please Jackson’s fans even if it doesn’t break new ground in exploring the singer’s life.
TV and radio host Smiley (My Journey with Maya, 2015, etc.) and his frequent writing collaborator Ritz tell the story of the 16 weeks preceding the death of singer Michael Jackson (1958-2009).
Before he died, the King of Pop was preparing for a series of comeback concerts in London. He was also doing a lot of shopping, playing with his three children, watching Shirley Temple movies, making questionable business decisions, receiving almost daily Botox injections, taking an increasing number of prescription painkillers, and suffering from a degree of insomnia that caused him to enlist a doctor to administer the anesthetics that led to his death. The authors delve through a wealth of research material to create a nearly day-by-day account of Jackson’s last weeks, with occasional glimpses into his earlier life. Smiley and Ritz are clearly sympathetic to their subject, sometimes to the point of glossing over Jackson’s more questionable choices and actions. In occasionally purple prose, the authors ratchet up the suspense and drama of this period of the singer’s life, ending most of the brief chapters with some variant on, “Sleep, the most precious of commodities, eluded him,” or “sleep, precious sleep, comes not at all.” The most intriguing sections of the book unravel the complicated business relationships in which Jackson was involved, his attempts to separate himself from his parents and siblings, and his efforts to push his art further while his fans were demanding more of the same. The authors, who set out to understand why their subject died at 50, end up asking a different question: “Given the extraordinary obstacles he faced, the stresses that pulled him apart, how did Michael survive as long as he did?”
This compact biography should please Jackson’s fans even if it doesn’t break new ground in exploring the singer’s life.Pub Date: June 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-316-25909-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 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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