Not much of a newspapering memoir, all in all, which is unfortunate after so rich a career.
Further evidence that good editors do not necessarily make good writers.
Bradlee is, of course, the now-retired, legendary editor of the Washington Post, the man who took the paper from Sputnik to Watergate to Iran-Contra and beyond. Yet of this important work we learn little; we are instead treated to truisms like, "A newspaper is not referred to as `the daily miracle' for nothing.'' Bradlee is candid about having been scooped by the New York Times on the Pentagon papers and the role that scooping had on the Post's devotion to Watergate: "We found ourselves in the humiliating position of having to rewrite the competition.'' But his other remarks on coverage of Watergate affair, in which his coordination was crucial, are mostly unhelpful; there is little to learn from his cheerleading: "You really haven't been interviewed until you have sat across from Woodward and Bernstein. Bob with his square, all-American midwestern 4-H friendliness disguising, for the most part, the relentless determination that is his trademark. Carl, with his Hippy, conspiratorial, Rolling Stone exterior disguising his inventive, intuitive, analytical technique.'' There is no news here, especially not about the current buzz of the Beltway: the identity of Deep Throat. Bradlee shrugs off the issue, remarking, "It should be possible to identify Deep Throat simply by entering all the information about him in All the President's Men into a computer...'' Neither is there much analysis or self-reflection in the author's uninspired recitation of events. Bradlee has the maddening habit of hinting at close friendships with important players like JFK but never revealing quite enough of what would be truly useful to know: the relationship of the press to power in America.
Not much of a newspapering memoir, all in all, which is unfortunate after so rich a career.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-684-80894-3
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1995
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
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