A fresh, readable look at events and players that, though well-known to history, deserve to be studied for some time to come.
On the forging of the wartime Winston Churchill, a figure iconic to this day, in the crucible of events that took place in the spring of 1940.
That Churchill was a gifted writer and speechmaker is well-known; that he drank alcohol by the bucket is not news, either. In this work of popular history, a tie-in to a forthcoming film, screenwriter and novelist McCarten (Death of a Superhero, 2007, etc.) does venture a novel thesis along the way: that in May 1940, Churchill was prepared to strike a peace deal with Hitler, “as utterly repugnant as that idea might now seem.” Admitting that the thesis is both conjectural and unpopular, the author buttresses it with an argument that seems reasonable, if one that academic historians would likely refute. In the end, of course, Churchill chose instead to stand and fight. McCarten does good service by showing how Churchill used his pen to advance Britain’s cause; the author engages in a highly useful sort of rhetorical analysis that examines Churchill’s use of repeated words, phrases, and motifs and his subtle reference to other classic addresses and essays: “In stark contrast to Hitler’s egomaniacal speeches—which emphasized the word ‘I’—Churchill…knew the power of ‘We’ when exhorting the British public to take up such a fearful struggle.” McCarten sometimes seems to go a bridge too far, as with an invented dialogue between Churchill and Lord Halifax, but his reasoning is generally sound. His study is also timely given not just his own film, but also the recent release of Christopher Nolan’s film Dunkirk, recounting a key event that led to Churchill’s famous “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets” speech, by which he aimed “to give voice to the people of Britain.” Churchill succeeded admirably, and so, in the main, does McCarten.
A fresh, readable look at events and players that, though well-known to history, deserve to be studied for some time to come.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-274952-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2017
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
