A straightforward, honest, and humble memoir.
Kyle relates the story of her life with her husband, Chris Kyle, of American Sniper fame.
With the assistance of DeFelice, who also co-authored American Sniper, Kyle gives readers an inside view of life in their early years of marriage, the moments of tenderness and romance that drew them together, the births of their two children, and the sadness, disappointment, and anger she felt when Kyle was deployed repeatedly to various locations in the Middle East. She discusses some of the missions her husband carried out in dangerous places like Ramadi, Fallujah, and Baghdad and how Chris did his job without question, seeing it as a duty to protect those he had sworn to serve. Kyle delves into the difficulties they both experienced when her husband decided not to re-enlist, the emotional ups and downs and physical toll his job had taken on him, and her own need to have him be whole. The author also addresses the process of writing American Sniper and the overnight fame it brought, as well as the Jesse Ventura lawsuit, Chris’ murder, and the overwhelming grief she experienced after her husband’s death. Kyle includes actual emails Chris sent while on deployment that address the terrible pressures she felt being a military wife in charge of two small children while fearing for her husband’s life. The story is gritty, romantic, and bittersweet, as only a story of this nature can be. It may not have a happy ending, but it is filled with a love, a strong faith in God, family, and country, and the determination of a woman to carry on as best she can under the strain of fame and the burden of grief. Those familiar with American Sniper will appreciate this perspective on Kyle’s life.
A straightforward, honest, and humble memoir.Pub Date: May 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-239808-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
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
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