The first collection in English of Schweitzer letters proves to be a smashing introduction to the life and work of the nonagenarian polymath (1875-1965). Schweitzer became a household name as a Bach scholar, theologian, medical missionary, and peace activist (he won the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize). All four careers lend shape to these letters- -some printed in their entirety, most abridged—chosen for their ability to reveal the ``context of Schweitzer's life and the directions he moved in.'' Understandably, the letters often center on their author's exhaustion, a state matched only by his enthusiasm. The very first entry locates in religion the source of Schweitzer's remarkable labors (``I have kept from marrying so that...I may be completely free to serve our Lord''); this spiritual passion kept him active until the end, as indicated by the very last words of his last letter: ``I am still interested in everything concerning Bach.'' In between, he wrote, always by hand, to hundreds of correspondents, including Martin Buber (``I want you to know that I have not forgotten you''), Romain Rolland, Max Planck, Albert Einstein (``Who would ever have thought that I, a decent theologian, would turn into a gambler and speculator in order to keep the hospital afloat?''), Thornton Wilder, Dag Hammarskjîld, Hermann Hesse (``growing flowers is impossible because of the freely grazing hospital goats''), Bertrand Russell, and John F. Kennedy (``I am writing to congratulate you and to thank you for having the vision and courage to initiate a policy of world peace''). As these excerpts hint, the letters are invariably charming, self-disclosing, and abuzz with moral intention. A priceless addition to the Schweitzer legacy; a posthumous gift to the world from a man who made every second count.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-02-607171-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
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 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
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