A disappointingly passionless memoir from one of the 20th century's greater spirits. Best remembered for the high-profile reformist role he played during the so-called Prague Spring of 1968, Dubcek died last year (at age 72) following a road accident in Bohemia. Before his passing, he'd completed a rough draft of his autobiography but—despite the efforts of editor/collaborator Hochman (a Czech-born journalist who contributes an illuminating afterword)—the published text can most charitably be described as deadly earnest and tediously detailed. The son of Slovak-American parents who returned to their homeland prior to WW II's outbreak, Dubcek joined a guerrilla unit and was wounded in battle against the Germans before they were routed by Soviet forces. Always politically active at the grass- roots level, the young idealist worked his way up through the ranks of the Communist Party, which, in 1948, seized power in Czechoslovakia before scheduled elections could be held. Two decades on, Dubeck was in the vanguard of a liberalization movement whose democratic platform captured the wider world's imagination- -and outraged Kremlin hard-liners. Warsaw Pact troops invaded the insurgent satellite in August 1968, dashing any immediate hopes of ``socialism with a human face'' and bundling Dubcek (who had replaced a Stalinist as CP boss) off to Moscow for public reflection. Consigned to work as a forester, he survived to abet the Velvet Revolution that rid his countrymen of the Soviet yoke in 1989. The decency and caution that were hallmarks of Dubcek's public career as an apostle of progressive change prove drawbacks in his personal testament. Weighed down by judicious assessments of dramatic events and overlong asides on yesteryear's political arcana, the pedestrian narrative never brings its author or his dreams to life. (Sixty photos)
Pub Date: May 1, 1993
ISBN: 1-56836-000-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Kodansha
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1993
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 2026 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.
