A short, readable biography that sticks to King's public career and legacy. Fairclough, (History/Univ. of Wales, Lampeter; To Redeem the Soul of America, 1987) synthesizes material from the rich lode of King scholarship. He describes King's intellectual formation at Morehouse College and Crozer Theological Seminary, his public emergence during the 195556 Montgomery bus boycott, and his subsequent surge to civil rights leadership. The author explores King's philosophy of nonviolence, contrasting his nonpartisan reformism with the ideas of older black leaders like Paul Robeson and W.E.B. DuBois, whose leftist sympathies made them victims of anticommunist fervor. Fairclough analyzes King's historic speech during the 1963 March on Washington, noting his use of ``hallowed symbols of Americanism'' to frame his call for social change. When King moved his protests north to cities like Chicago, he recognized that his incremental political victories had little effect on black poverty; in 1966 he began a more radical critique of American society, and the Vietnam War. Fairclough stumbles a few times. He states that allegations about King's sexual promiscuity ``are still confined to the realm of innuendo''; King colleague Ralph Abernathy's recent memoir supplies stronger evidence. Also, the author, commenting on Malcolm X, states that ``the earlier, angrier Malcolm...would be remembered and revered''; Malcolm's image is now under more subtle scrutiny. But Fairclough offers a savvy summary on King's legacy. Annual King Day celebrations, he writes, ``are too often tedious and empty rituals,'' and the ``I Have a Dream'' speech glosses over King's radicalism and militancy. While the author acknowledges that King was no original thinker, he believes that King's genius was his public speaking, his ``religious enthusiasm and moral certainty.'' And while some observers think King could not have staved off the decline of the civil rights movement, the author suggests that his leadership might indeed have achieved more. A good introduction for those too busy to read the more monumental King biographies.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8203-1690-3
Page Count: 168
Publisher: Univ. of Georgia
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1994
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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