Workmanlike biography of the combative (but socially adept) editor/publisher of Mississippi's Greenville Delta Democrat-Times. Carter (1907-72) was hailed as a courageous integrationist by the eastern establishment (which awarded him a Pulitzer); criticized by blacks and progressive whites for supporting merely a more gentlemanly status quo; vilified as a ``nigger-lover'' and Communist by segregationists—and was still (as a Louisiana-born true southerner) invited to preside over the Delta Debutante Club Ball. Here, Waldron (Close Connections, 1987, etc.) offers few clues to the development of Carter's social vision (and one wonders just how much he was actually reconstructed), but her picture of the pre-civil-rights Deep South gives memory a salutary jolt: Carter's newspaper profoundly shocked white sensibilities by printing a photograph of black Olympic athlete Jesse Owens and by deciding that the black Red Cross chair deserved a courtesy title- -``Mrs. St. Hille'' rather than ``the St. Hille woman.'' Carter enjoyed a good fight: He took on demagogues like Huey Long and Theodore Bilbo with relish and invective, and his editorials excoriated white Mississippians for denying blacks decent education and protection under the law even as they reiterated his opposition to social equality. Financial struggles—more than politics- -repeatedly threatened the paper: Carter suffered from personal attacks, his youngest son's death, deteriorating eyesight, alcoholism, and, eventually, Alzheimer's. A Greenville booster, he was active with local organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce, as was his wife, Betty, who helped keep the paper going and was the uncredited coauthor of many of Carter's books. Waldron eschews both hero-making and debunking: readable if surfacey.
Pub Date: June 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-945575-38-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
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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