A stiff, workmanlike approach to the life of a noble figure.
Dense, encyclopedic biography of world-renowned intrepid proponent for Italian social justice.
A “strong and independent” boy born into a coastal trading family on July 4, 1807, in Nice, Italy, Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–1882) rejected his parents’ efforts to steer him toward the more distinguished career paths of a doctor or attorney and quickly learned the ranks of his father’s maritime livelihood (and officially set sail as an apprentice seaman) in his teens. Soon, though, his demanding work at sea was replaced with a heady interest in political activism, most notably with the Italian unification movement “Young Italy,” which was spearheaded by liberal reformist Giuseppe Mazzini, who would emerge as Garibaldi’s mentor. He abandoned a stint in the Sardinian navy in favor of a poorly organized insurrection and ended up in Brazil in 1835. This proved to be just the beginning of many causes the patriotic libertarian would become embroiled in; freeing people from the binds of tyranny and oppression became his life’s work. After engaging in land- and water-based warfare against the Brazilians, Garibaldi met his first wife, Anita, who bore him a son, Domenico, who also joined him on his missions. Adopting guerrilla warfare tactics both on land and at sea, he became a leader and hero in his continued support of exiles and emigrants in Montevideo, Uruguay, and in Italy, where he fought against the Austrians to defend the Roman Republic. After being exiled, he spent time in Tangiers, the United States and England, and moved on to fight in a resistance against a new French Republic. A serious injury prevented him from becoming a major general in the American Civil War’s Union Army, but a burgeoning writing career produced four novels and his memoirs. Scirocco frequently refers to Garibaldi’s autobiographical “memoirs” for direction within the narrative, but he depicts many events with a hazy, cautious speculation since dates and activities remain unclear even in Garibaldi’s own text. Still, the author does a serviceable job of commingling relevant historical factoids with the extraordinary life of this unwavering “quintessential hero.”
A stiff, workmanlike approach to the life of a noble figure.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-691-11540-5
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2007
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
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