A beautiful composition that shows Cajal’s indelible contribution to science and art.
An in-depth biography of the Nobel laureate who “is considered the founder of modern neuroscience.”
In the late 1800s, Europe was rippling with activity in science, art, and politics. Against this backdrop, Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852-1934) devoted himself passionately to the study of microscopic structures that comprise living tissue. Inspired by drawing and photography, he created innumerable images of objects he viewed through his microscope, and his legacy as a pioneering neuroscientist is entwined with his artistic achievements, which include drawings of neurons and other cells that are frequently displayed in major museums. In this deeply researched and intimate book, Ehrlich illuminates his subject’s life and work, hailing him as a “complicated and monumental man” who “produced the first clear evidence that the brain is composed of individual cells, later termed neurons, fundamentally the same as those that make up the rest of the living world.” The author delves deep, building on his research for his previous book, The Dreams of Santiago Ramón y Cajal. “From every source that I could find, writes Ehrlich, “I gathered every trace of him, every sliver of his life and scrap of his work, every piece of information about his science, his country, and his world.” In vivid detail, he describes Cajal’s emergence from childhood rogue to internationally celebrated scientist and chronicles unrelenting pursuit of knowledge within a volatile and rapidly changing world. Through colorful anecdotes about Cajal’s upbringing, education, career, marriage, and fatherhood, the author reveals his character in more detail than ever before, bringing him to life in clear and elegant prose. Cajal believed that scientific pursuit was indistinguishable from human self-discovery. Writes Ehrlich, he “provided a deeper account of our humanity, the story of how our brains became what they are.” The book includes photos and anatomical drawings.
A beautiful composition that shows Cajal’s indelible contribution to science and art.Pub Date: March 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-374-11037-6
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2022
A charming and often poignant valediction from rock ’n’ roll’s Prince of Darkness.
The late heavy metal legend considers his mortality in this posthumous memoir.
“I ain’t ready to go anywhere,” writes Osbourne in the opening pages of his new memoir. “It’s good being alive. I like it. I want to be here with my family.” Given the context—Osbourne died on July 22, 2025, two weeks after the publisher announced the news of this book—it’s undeniably sad. But the rest of the text sees the Black Sabbath singer confronting the health struggles of his last years with dark humor and something approaching grace. The memoir begins in 2018; he wrote an earlier one, I Am Ozzy, in 2010. He tells of a staph infection he suffered that proved to be the start of a long, painful battle with various illnesses—soon after, he contracted a flu, which morphed into pneumonia. A spinal injury caused by a fall followed, causing him to undergo a series of surgeries and leaving him struggling with intense pain. And then there was his diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, the treatment of which was complicated by his longtime struggle with alcohol and drug addiction. Osbourne peppers the chronicle of his final years with anecdotes from his past, growing up in Birmingham, England, and playing with—and then being fired from—Black Sabbath, and some of his most well-known antics (yes, he does address biting the heads off of a dove and a bat). He writes candidly and regretfully about the time he viciously attacked his wife, Sharon—the book is in many ways a love letter to her and his children. The memoir showcases Osbourne’s wit and charm; it’s rambling and disorganized, but so was he. It functions as both a farewell and a confession, and fans will likely find much to admire in this account. “Death’s been knocking at my door for the last six years, louder and louder,” he writes. “And at some point, I’m gonna have to let him in.”
A charming and often poignant valediction from rock ’n’ roll’s Prince of Darkness.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781538775417
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: tomorrow
BOOK REVIEW
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
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