A masterly work that advances by salient themes and vigorous strokes.
A barbed biography, relentless and occasionally sarcastic, reveals the many problematic facets of the long-lived revolutionary and reformer Deng Xiaoping (1904-1997).
Unlike Ezra F. Vogel’s Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (2011), which focuses on the last third of the premier’s life and is faulted by historians Pantsov (Capital Univ.) and Levine (Univ. of Montana) for not being critical enough of its subject, this work by the co-authors of Mao: The Real Story (2012) looks more extensively at Deng’s formative years under Mao Zedong, using newly available material from the Russian State Archives and other sources. Beginning their account with the bloody purging of the student demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in 1989—an order given by Deng to crush the “counterrevolutionary rebellion”—the authors take great pains to delineate the makeup of a leader so inculcated by Maoist authoritarian ways that he would sacrifice everything to the communist cause, including his cherished reforms. Indeed, this would be the refrain of his remarkably resilient career, from his first repudiation of his adoring parents when he joined the Bolshevik movement as a student in Paris in the early 1920s to his sycophantic appeasement under Mao during the disastrous Great Leap. The authors emphasize that Deng embraced communism as a youth because he was “ready for anything that would help redress the insults and injuries inflicted upon him by the capitalist world.” He became an obedient soldier of the Chinese Communist Party and, as chief of the Southwest Region during the 1950s, helped solidify the repression of Tibet and galvanize agrarian reform. Caught up in the “utopian hysteria” dictated by Mao, Deng nonetheless began to recognize the need to oppose the leader without compromising his own position. His skillful dance during the Cultural Revolution, when he was denounced, arrested and exiled, yet re-emerged rehabilitated, provides a valuable key to this enigmatic leader.
A masterly work that advances by salient themes and vigorous strokes.Pub Date: May 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-19-939203-2
Page Count: 676
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2015
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
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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