Lovers of political memoirs may be dissatisfied, but readers interested in media and politics will learn a lot from the...
Charming memoir by the first official White House videographer.
Chaudhary, a punk rocker turned film professor, joined the Obama campaign in 2007, thanks to the aid of a friend on the New Media team, not even expecting the candidate would win the primaries. With a mission to gain the junior senator from Illinois as much YouTube exposure as possible, Chaudhary and associates developed a rapid-fire method of documentary filmmaking, capturing Obama in as many lights as possible: making campaign stops, chatting with volunteers and potential voters, taking the stage before a speech, making major addresses, etc. In the process, Obama’s team developed a new style of campaigning suited to the Internet age, a style that future campaigns will surely try to replicate. The point was not to make viral videos, but rather a large and diverse array of little films that could appeal to the broadest cross section of the electorate and show off the candidate’s “authenticity” to best effect. Chaudhary became one of Obama’s constant companions; fortunately for him, Obama enjoyed his slightly warped sense of humor and offbeat style, so much so that, after the election, he was invited to join the transition team and then forge a place for himself in the White House. Half joking, the author refers to the position, which he left in 2011, as being like the president’s wedding videographer, “if every day is a wedding.” Chaudhary was also responsible for creating and maintaining the popular West Wing Week, a weekly video roundup of White House events on whitehouse.gov. While he is amusing on the subjects of his modest “rise to power” and what he saw at the White House, the author writes with some passion about the history, uses and craft of political image-making, and he seems more comfortable offering pithy critiques of campaign aids than political gossip.
Lovers of political memoirs may be dissatisfied, but readers interested in media and politics will learn a lot from the lessons Chaudhary took away from his experiences.Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9572-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Times/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
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
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
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