Sharp and enchanting.
A finely hewn portrait of the wizard Merlin from the 12th to the 16th centuries, when, in the eyes of the times, he was very much a real historical personage.
In the early years of the 12th century, Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote a book known as the History of the Kings of Britain. It was a hoax, but it was a book very much of its time, a huge best-seller, writes Lawrence-Mathers (Medieval History/Univ. of Reading) in this deeply satisfying survey of the famed magician. The author discusses Geoffrey and the other contemporary or near-contemporary historians at work, and she notes that one of the things that gave Geoffrey’s book such instant popularity was the fact that the emerging political entity known as Britain needed a history with substance, lineage and heroes, something to shore up its many dynastic insecurities. Merlin was just the man to deliver: an omniscient magician yet fallible and vulnerable, reader of the stars and the flights of birds, and, most of all, a prophet. Yet Merlin was a figment of Geoffrey’s imagination. He was not a figure at court, but arrived when needed; there is no intimation he was bedecked in pointed cap and astrological robes, but lived simply in near hermitlike circumstances deep in the woods. Thanks to Geoffrey's book, Merlin became a fixture in the popular, theological, political and romantic imagination. He was the right man in the right place, and other historians tapped into his popularity to buttress their work; his deeds didn’t stop with Geoffrey, but were embellished for another 400 years. Out of Merlin and his many gifts and prophesies, Geoffrey et al. made a history of a place, and there also emerged a dangerous theological and political edge comprised of fusing the magical tradition of the ancient world, the early Christian Church and the Celtic past. Lawrence-Mathers nimbly brings readers into the Middle Ages, during which most people believed in prophecy and magic as real, active things, when the Merlins of the world surely walked the land and saw what most did not.
Sharp and enchanting.Pub Date: Nov. 27, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-300-14489-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
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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