Highlights of the New Jersey Democratic senator and former professional athlete's life, thoughts, and accomplishments. An earlier memoir, Life on the Run (1976), described Bradley's experiences as a Princeton All-American and professional basketball player, and set the stage for his 1978 transition from athletics to the US Senate. This second memoir is a complex interweaving of memories, experiences, legislative accomplishments, and ruminations, leading to another transformation in Bradley's life: his decision not to run for re-election in 1996. This unusual memoir includes statements of policy on such matters as race, economic justice, the environment, campaign financing, tax reform, labor-management relations, and the role of government. Bradley justifies the inclusion of such disparate material by pulling everything into the context of his life: describing, for example, how his experiences playing with black basketball players shaped his commitment to racial equality and how his political principles stem from the sense of ethics and fair play with which he was raised. Bradley goes into almost numbing detail in describing legislation he has sponsored and gives too little space to intense controversies in his career, such as his support for Reagan administration policies in Nicaragua. In addition, cynics might charge that he has laid the groundwork for a future presidential bid by offering platform-like positions on such matters as welfare reform, abortion, and criminal justice, and advocating a ``third way'' that claims to reject the failed policies of both conservatives and liberals. But there are many more reasons to be impressed than critical of this memoir (every word of which Bradley apparently wrote himself). Bradley reveals how a politician operates and that's makes this book interesting. What makes it memorable is the way it reveals how political office can be a constant learning experience for a thoughtful politician. However limited that category of officeholders may be, this memoir proves that it includes Bill Bradley. (First printing of 100,000; Book-of-the-Month Club selection; author tour)
Pub Date: Jan. 24, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-44488-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
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
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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