An astute—and highly flattering—view of human aspirations.
An aerospace engineer makes a reasonable argument that progress owes less to war, politics, or religion than love of exploration.
A mission manager at SpaceX, Rader is no scholar, but he has read the scholars as well as the popular books, so he has done his homework. As a result, his history of the human species, which makes up most of his book, has an air of authority as well as a lively pace. While no historical expert claims that East Africa circa several million years ago was overpopulated, almost everyone agrees that our ancestors wandered. Even before Homo sapiens appeared about 200,000 years ago, hominids spread across Asia and Europe. Our species followed in several waves, arriving at America and Australia and, within the past 1,000 years, the Pacific islands. Rader emphasizes that these were not accidents. It’s likely that reaching America and certain that reaching Australia required a sea voyage, and finding isolated Pacific islands required almost superhuman navigation skills. Furthermore, these travelers brought along families, domestic animals, and plants as well as their culture and technology. The author marches quickly through the history of civilization, leaving no doubt in the reader’s mind that nations driven to explore—a word which he takes to include trading, conquering, or simply traveling—prospered. No good resulted if they gave it up (see 16th-century Japan or medieval Europe). With polar regions explored in the early 20th century, Rader drops geography to devote the final 100 pages to the history of flight and space travel and the possibilities of reaching the planets and stars. Inevitably, he ends with a great deal of speculation, but it is good scientific speculation that will leave readers yearning to see how it turns out. “If the history of exploration has taught us anything,” he writes, “it’s that amazing things happen when humans force themselves to try something no one has done before.”
An astute—and highly flattering—view of human aspirations.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-982123-53-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Sept. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
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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