A good book for those seeking encouragement that someone in Washington might care.
New York Times Magazine contributing writer Laskas (English/Univ. of Pittsburgh; Concussion, 2015, etc.) reveals the unknown but very important White House office that plays a large part in the legacy of the Obama administration.
The Office of Presidential Correspondence was first established under President William McKinley, but the volume has increased considerably, particularly during the previous president’s tenure. Early in his career, Obama received vital assistance from “the 101st Senator,” Pete Rouse, who had three decades of experience in Washington, D.C. Rouse became Obama’s Capitol Hill guru, helping him hit the ground running. Then he stayed on for Obama’s time in the White House, modernizing the OPC in the process. “The mail had currency,” writes the author. “Some staff members called it ‘the letter underground.’ Starting in 2010, all mail was scanned and preserved. Starting in 2011, every word of every email factored into the creation of a daily word cloud, its image distributed around the White House so policy makers and staff members alike could get a glimpse at the issues and ideas constituents had on their minds.” Rouse insists it was Obama’s idea to read 10 letters per day, “the ‘10LADs’ as they came to be known.” The organizational process was massive: 50 staff members, more than 30 interns, and some 300 volunteers reading each day’s 10,000-plus letters and coding them according to subject. There were form response letters, but some required individual attention from a federal agency. Some received a red dot, meaning they should be processed in 24 hours. Over the years, the process expanded to some of the administration’s senior staff and even some members of Congress, who became known as “Friends of the Mailroom.” This is a curious collection that readers will find inspiring, depressing, or uplifting depending on their points of view. Regardless, it’s impressive that someone read the letters and replies were sent out, some written by Obama. In a comfortable journalistic narrative, Laskas also provides background on many of the letters.
A good book for those seeking encouragement that someone in Washington might care.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-50938-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
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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