Under the direction of Dr. Margaret Mead, this study accomplished through the and Corporation, a private research organization, is an enlightening and spellbinding sport on our bewildering Communist antagonists. With the threefold aim of systematic interpretation of existing information, correcting the erroneous tendency of Americans view Soviet behavior as if it were American, and to lay the basis for future research; he report discusses the peculiar Soviet invention of the Party Line, the Soviet concept of leadership, of personality, the integrity of Soviet leadership, authority relationships at different levels and the organization of the Party which in one aspect is to include each individual in the state, and yet in another acts as a check for the possibility that the masses may be led astray. In concluding, the study mentions two possible sources of weakness within the system — an increase in armaments may mean (1) the owing generation may not be able to carry on the development of Soviet society, (2) rule by the political police may produce friction. A strength foreseen is a rise in the standard of living with resultant stabilization of the society. The eye-opener in his study, in the analysis of the curiously "Puritan" ideal of Soviet personality, with to emphasis on rigid self-discipline, self-analysis and single-minded devotion to a which may encompass any amount of what, to us, are contradations in the attainment. an understanding of Soviet logic and lack of it in foreign relationships, in domestic urges and fabrications, this is essential reading for every American. The study is used on direct sources from Soviet publications, movies, novels, speeches of Lenin and and interviews with Russian refugees and emigres. In straight-forward style and object this may well reach into the popular market and critical attention is assured. forget the surprise success of her Keep Your Powder Dry.
Pub Date: Oct. 3, 1951
ISBN: 0313210810
Page Count: 148
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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