A spirited look at life inside Père-Lachaise, as told by its philosophical and funny curator.
Right at home in the cemetery.
One of the benefits of living in a cemetery is that your deceased neighbors don’t complain about how noisy you and your family are—especially when you’re throwing a party. So observes Gallot in this delightful and thoughtful book about his experiences as the curator of Paris’ Père-Lachaise Cemetery, likely the world’s most beloved burial ground. Gallot became something of a sensation in France when, during the Covid-19 pandemic, he spotted a rare fox cub at the cemetery; the photos he took of the animal went viral. The book includes many of Gallot’s handsome images of the garden cemetery: cute felines (he calls them “tombcats”), birds, weasellike stone martens, and the ornate and weathered headstones and chapels that, nestled amid trees and rambling ivy, help make the place popular. Of course, the famous residents are also a draw. Within Père-Lachaise’s 110 acres are the remains of Frédéric Chopin, Isadora Duncan, Édith Piaf, Marcel Proust, Richard Wright, and Oscar Wilde. And, yes, Jim Morrison. His grave, fenced off to curb idolizers’ graffiti, attracts the most visitors. Gallot, in his 40s, prefers Morrissey’s music; he wanders the cemetery wondering about the dead, much as two friends do in the Smiths’ song “Cemetery Gates”: “So we go inside / And we gravely read the stones / All those people, all those lives, / Where are they now?” Gallot is the son of memorial stonemasons. He didn’t think he’d be working in the same field, but he seems perfect for the job of managing a cemetery that holds roughly 1.3 million souls (and not just because his birthday is Halloween): He has a healthy respect for the dead, and he values the importance of “accompanying the living,” as he says of the grieving. He’s also justifiably proud of eliminating pesticides in the cemetery, which means wildflowers now bloom everywhere. In this place of death, life flourishes.
A spirited look at life inside Père-Lachaise, as told by its philosophical and funny curator.Pub Date: April 29, 2025
ISBN: 9781778401589
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Greystone Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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
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