The shelves groan complainingly with studies of the Iron Duke and the Little Corporal. Room should be found for this one.
English historian Roberts (Eminent Churchillians, 1995, etc.) delivers a satisfying study of the opposing generals of yesteryear, whose lives intersected in all sorts of odd ways.
Napoleon Bonaparte and Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, were alike in many respects: both were born in 1769, both lost their fathers early, both had four brothers and three sisters, both changed the spelling of their surnames in adulthood, and both were foreigners, which prompted George Bernard Shaw to quip, “An English army led by an Irish general; that might be a match for a French army led by an Italian general.” Moreover, both shared mistresses, grudging admiration and mutual contempt, and an “invincible self-assurance” that sometimes led them to commit grievous errors in the field. Yet their differences, as Roberts effectively demonstrates, were ultimately more important than their similarities: though Napoleon was a brave and resourceful commander, for example, he seems not to have taken into account the immense logistical problems attendant in trying to conquer most of Europe, with the result that he left his troops to maraud for food and drove his horses to death; whereas Wellington, more cautious, managed to bring fresher troops and mounts into the field, if not the legendary glories of his opponent. Roberts capably corrects a few myths as he follows the two generals to their ultimate contest at Waterloo, writing, for instance, that far from disdaining Wellington as an inferior, Napoleon “squeezed people for information about Wellington’s character and interests,” denigrating Wellington only after Waterloo in an effort to explain away his defeat; Wellington, for his part, returned the compliment by, in effect, saving Napoleon’s life at Waterloo—an incident that, as Roberts reports it, will be of considerable interest to students of the battle.
The shelves groan complainingly with studies of the Iron Duke and the Little Corporal. Room should be found for this one.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2002
ISBN: 0-7432-2832-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2002
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
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
SEEN & HEARD
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