Reminding us that Americans do not hold the monopoly on conspiracy theories, Knight analyzes the dramatic events and repercussions surrounding the murder of Sergei Kirov. In December of 1934, Leningrad Party Chief and leading Communist Kirov was murdered in a deserted corridor of party headquarters by a disenchanted ex-Communist named Nikolaev. The mysteries of the assassination are fascinating and myriad. Kirov’s bodyguard, who was somehow detained further down the corridor and didn—t even witness the murder, died en route to an interview with Stalin the next day, allegedly as the result of falling out of the truck in which he was being transported. Kirov’s office had been relocated to a distant portion of the main corridor while he was away. How could Nikolaev have entered the building unnoticed? These are but a few of the enigmas that arise on opening this Pandora’s box. There have been countless attempts to solve the case, from Stalin’s arrival in Leningrad the day after the murder to investigations headed by Khrushchev and Gorbachev. In this, her latest book dealing with the Soviet secret police, Knight (Spies Without Cloaks: The KGB’s Successors, 1996, etc.) draws a compelling picture of Kirov—a bright man and a gifted orator who rose from childhood poverty and incarceration under the tsarist regime to the highest levels of Communist leadership. In Knight’s view, the Kirov murder case served as a prototype of party and secret police complicity. Not only did Stalin use the murder to launch a campaign against Leningrad, she contends, but he planned it as a pretext for launching his massive purges. “No one, it seems, was untouched by what had happened on the first of December 1934.” Thus the Kirov murder raised questions for the entire nation about its leadership’s legitimacy. While some experts might argue with Knight’s conclusions, general readers will be drawn to her narrative of this fascinating case and its continued grip on the Soviet/Russian political imagination. (26 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: June 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-8090-6404-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1999
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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