An often fascinating, if uneven, glimpse into the world of a bestselling author.
A disdainful biography of popular psychiatrist Morgan Scott Peck (1936-2005) by journalist Jones (The National Catholic Reporter at Fifty, 2014, etc.).
Peck, the author of 15 books, is best known for his debut, the groundbreaking 1978 bestseller The Road Less Traveled: a New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth. The work catapulted Peck from being a private-practice psychiatrist to a celebrity who commanded exorbitant fees on speaking tours. Jones traces Peck’s childhood and young adulthood before skipping to his years as a writer and speaker, finally focusing on his last years. He writes that Peck’s wealthy “WASP” upbringing in midcentury New York City informed his entire life. Peck’s troubled relationships with his domineering father and bullying older brother, in Jones’ opinion, dictated Peck’s future neuroses: “Peck was a control freak with an addictive personality, a narcissist with a gift,” he writes. (Other people he quotes in this book similarly characterize Peck as self-centered.) Educated at top-tier pillars of education, including Phillips Exeter Academy, Middlebury College, and Harvard University, Peck broke free from the East Coast by attending medical school in Cleveland, Ohio. By then, he’d married Lily Ho, a Chinese woman, to his parents’ disapproval; her parents equally opposed the marriage. He joined the Army, and, after several years of living as a military family, the couple and their three children settled in Connecticut—mere miles from Peck’s childhood summer home. Overall, Jones’ account of Peck’s life, a revised version of his 2007 book The Road He Travelled, provides readers with an engaging look into 20th-century U.S. history, from Peck’s father’s association with John Foster Dulles at law firm Sullivan & Cromwell to Peck’s own service during the Vietnam War. However, there’s some unevenness in Jones’ telling of the events of Peck’s life, as it focuses heavily on Peck’s childhood and dysfunctional family relationships, then glosses over decades to spend an inordinate amount of time recounting Peck’s last year and the feud between Peck’s second wife, Kathy, and his executive secretary, Gail Puterbaugh. Jones’ prose style also tends to time-hop; for example, it makes reference to Peck’s divorce from his wife Lily before he’s even married to her and then gives the divorce itself quick treatment when it occurs chronologically. As a result, readers may hunger to discover what Jones left out.
An often fascinating, if uneven, glimpse into the world of a bestselling author.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Capparoe Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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