Solid but plodding, like its exemplary subject.
Serviceable life of the autodidact’s autodidact, bringing recognition to a chap all but forgotten for the last couple of hundred years.
Thomas Young (1773–1829) was not someone you’d want to go up against on Jeopardy! Indeed, writes British science journalist Robinson, the London Science Museum opines that “Young probably had a wider range of creative learning than any other Englishman in history. He made discoveries in nearly every field he studied.” Among his contributions were advances in the wave theory of light, for which Young squared off against the orthodox Newtonian physicists of his day (thanks to Einstein, both Newton and Young can be viewed as sort of right), and his discovery of how the eye focuses on objects at different distances. Add to that his mastering dozens of languages, inventing the category “Indo-European” along the way, developing of a rule of thumb for adjusting adult dosages of medications for children’s use, and inventing a method of tuning a harpsichord, and deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs, and it becomes clear that Young was an uncommon force who little deserves the obscurity into which he has fallen. Save, of course, that yesterday’s revolutionaries become today’s establishment become tomorrow’s deposed fuddy-duddies, which is just what happened; in his own time, Young, accused of committing “gratuitous fictions” in his work on the physics of light, lost ground to nose-to-the-grindstone types who had more patience for the hard, dull work of endless experimentation. Robinson varies, not always successfully, between dumbing down the science and plunging full-tilt into arcana, and many linguists will still want to give pride of place to Champollion on the matter of the Rosetta Stone. Still, he gives a good account of Young, who emerges in the end as something of a proto-nerd, brilliant but not much fun in company, incapable of telling a joke but able to explain the world.
Solid but plodding, like its exemplary subject.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-13-134304-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pi Press/Pearson
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2005
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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