Well-wrought life of the woman who was not only—in the words of a New York Times editorial published on the occasion of her death, in 1948 at age 73—``the spirit that held [the Rockefellers] together'' but whose role in the handling of the family wealth was ``a fortunate thing for society, for this country, and for the world.'' Kert (The Hemingway Women, 1983), despite all her exhaustive research, happily lets her subject retain all of her formidable vitality and independence—characteristics that her husband, the psychologically repressed and romantic loner John D. Rockefeller, Jr., both admired and occasionally sought to curtail. Born in Providence into the distinguished Aldrich family, Abby grew up in a household dominated by her father's career as a US senator. Part of each year was spent in Washington, where Abby often acted as hostess when her ailing mother was indisposed. The Aldriches were lively, outgoing, and irreverent; the Rockefellers pious, reserved, and cautious, especially John, who fell in love with Abby while a student at Brown. These differences irrevocably shaped the marriage: While John adored Abby, always sought her counsel, and supported her involvement in so many issues—though he only reluctantly accepted her role as founder of the Museum of Modern Art—he resented the demands that their children and society made on her. Abby, a remarkably intuitive and sensitive woman, learned how to handle John's resentment, though at some personal cost. Kert deals not only with the couple's marriage—which was, in spite of some strains, a lifelong love affair—and the six Rockefeller children, but also with Abby's generous contributions to art, education, and politics, as well with as her role in creating Rockefeller Center and Colonial Williamsburg. A splendidly intelligent, very readable portrait of a woman who was as wise in the rearing of her family as in the spending of her great wealth. (Forty b&w photos—not seen)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-394-56975-X
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1993
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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