An uneven biography that should still find an audience with budding journalists and those interested in a significant period...
An account of the adventurous life of Alicia Patterson (1906-1963), founder and editor of Newsday.
Before screenwriter Alice Arlen died earlier this year, she teamed with her husband, former New Yorker staff writer and TV critic Michael Arlen (Say Goodbye to Sam, 1984, etc.), to document the life and premature passing of Patterson, Alice’s aunt. Descended from a wealthy, powerful Chicago newspaper family, Patterson could have lived as an idle heiress or a philanthropist or some other choice open only to the very rich. Until age 34, she seemed rather aimless, marrying twice unhappily to men chosen by her imperious father. Eventually, she became an accomplished horsewoman and learned about flying airplanes. Twice divorced, Patterson chose her third husband on her own. Harry Guggenheim had benefitted from a family fortune in the mining business and owned estates on Long Island. Although he attempted to control Alicia, she resisted, and together they purchased a tiny Long Island newspaper. She won editorial if not financial control and slowly built Newsday into a successful general circulation daily. Feeling ignored by her husband and clashing with him about politics (she was more liberal than her generally conservative husband), Patterson developed a deep friendship with Adlai Stevenson, who became the governor of Illinois and then sought the presidency as the Democratic Party candidate in 1952 and 1956. Stevenson fell deeply in love with Patterson, and she loved Stevenson as well, albeit with less ardor. Their off-again, on-again affair defined a large portion of their later lives. Unable to bear children, Patterson's health began to deteriorate during her two final decades. She hoped to outlive Guggenheim and take total control of Newsday, but she died before he did. The authors display impressive research, but the narrative is marred by an unpleasant writing style, at turns cloying, rhetorical, and packed with too many unnecessary compound-complex sentences.
An uneven biography that should still find an audience with budding journalists and those interested in a significant period in the history of print journalism.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-87113-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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