by John Miller ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 2003
More a résumé than a life. For diehard fans only.
Another conscientious text that plods through its subject’s life yet misses the insights that really inform. Here, British biographer Miller covers all the minutiae but never makes the legendary actor, writer, and director transcend the sum of his many parts.
Unlike many other claimants to the title, Peter Ustinov is indeed a Renaissance man. He’s acted in film, theater, and television; written novels and scripts; and directed plays, operas, and movies. He’s also an exemplary citizen who has worked on behalf of international organizations like UNICEF and founded an institute in England to study prejudice. Born in 1921 in London to Russian parents whose colorful ancestry included Germans, French, and Ethiopians, Ustinov has always had an international perspective and following, which Miller dutifully records. The author covers all the steps in Ustinov’s path to Grand Old Man, including his adolescent drama lessons, first appearances on the English stage, and time out as a private in WWII producing military training films with actors like David Niven. Success as an actor and a playwright was swift, and Miller lists the numerous plays Ustinov acted in as well as those he wrote (The Love of the Four Colonels, Romanoff and Juliet, etc.), the films he acted in (winning Oscars for Spartacus and Topkapi), the books he wrote, the operas he directed, his television appearances, numerous honors including a knighthood, friendships with luminaries like Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, and Charles Laughton. A convivial man who likes fast cars and tennis, Ustinov is also a great comic and mimic. Miller briefly notes his three marriages, the third now in its fourth decade, and the existence of three daughters and a son. Despite many appreciative testimonies and anecdotes from colleagues, Ustinov remains elusive under his many hats.
More a résumé than a life. For diehard fans only.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-297-64660-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2003
Share your opinion of this book
More by John Miller
BOOK REVIEW
by John Miller ; illustrated by Giuliano Cucco
BOOK REVIEW
by John Miller ; illustrated by Giuliano Cucco
BOOK REVIEW
by John Miller ; illustrated by Giuliano Cucco
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Elie Wiesel
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
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...
Awards & Accolades
Likes
18
Our Verdict
GET IT
Google Rating
Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2016
New York Times Bestseller
Pulitzer Prize Finalist
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
Share your opinion of this book
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.