A vivid montage of American pop at its peak.
GQ contributing editor Richmond gives the great singer-composer her due.
Perhaps because Peggy Lee (1920–2002) sang with deceptive ease, her artistry has received less critical attention than that of such peers as Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. Her biographer here rights that wrong. Richmond finds Lee’s life and talent taking root in pain; she grew up in North Dakota during the Depression under stress from an alcoholic father and a physically and verbally abusive stepmother. To escape, Lee turned to singing. In strong scenes that evoke America’s golden age of popular song, the author traces her career. Lee sang first on radio, then with big bands; her style eventually emerged under the tutelage of a dour Benny Goodman. Work with the King of Swing also led to marriage with guitarist Dave Barbour. The two composed the hits “Mañana” and “It’s a Good Day,” songs with a carefree attitude that belied the turbulence of their relationship. Eventually, Barbour’s alcoholism and moody, jealous behavior helped end the union. As three successive marriages also collapsed, Lee made work the center of her life. Richmond assesses her career—decades of recordings, club and television appearances, some film acting—in meticulous, detailed critiques. He cites as Lee’s hallmarks impeccable taste, flawless timing and intense personal involvement with her music. He also describes the mercurial temper of a diva. As hospital attendants wheeled Lee towards the operating room for heart surgery, she berated a devoted musical director for usurping her authority by handing out checks to her band. He forgave her. After all, no one sang “Fever,” “Is That All There Is?” and “The Folks who Live on the Hill” as stunningly as she.
A vivid montage of American pop at its peak.Pub Date: April 5, 2006
ISBN: 0-8050-7383-3
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 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
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
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
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.
