by Cristina Marcano and Alberto Barrera Tyszka & translated by Kristina Cordero ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 21, 2007
Admirable search for the facts and insight that are often swamped in Chavez’s turbulent wake.
Thorough, thoughtful biography of Venezuela’s controversial leftist president.
Born of mixed ancestry in the plains area of Barinas, 54-year-old Chávez is “a tropical version of Zelig…adept at blending in,” conclude the authors, a husband-and-wife team of journalists from Caracas. They give the president credit for tireless work and attention to detail, at least early on, but they also quote Chávez’s former psychiatrist, who believes his formidable charm is often impelled by a narcissistic need to be adored. Marcano and Tyszka seem overwhelmed by the many and various explanations volunteered for the president’s occasionally strange behavior, notions and edicts. It’s easy to understand their problem: People who have gotten close to Chávez tend to be sharply divided between those who admire him to the point of adoration and his committed adversaries. The authors number among their sources several of the latter, including at least one former lover and several military officers who conspired with Chávez in his plot to overthrow the government. Planned for a decade, the attempted coup of February 1992 initially appeared to be a disaster; the administration got to the television station first and thus held on to power. Chávez was the first to surrender, and the government made the mistake of allowing him to address the nation, hoping that his co-conspirators would give themselves up without further bloodshed. That address, the authors note, gave Chávez the opportunity to work his charismatic magic on the Venezuelan people. They remembered when he was released from prison in 1994 and in 1998 elected him to the nation’s top office with 56 percent of the vote. Chávez has since survived an attempted coup, two divorces and the ongoing disapproval of the U.S. government.
Admirable search for the facts and insight that are often swamped in Chavez’s turbulent wake.Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-679-45666-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2007
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
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by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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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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