More interesting than Smith himself is the author’s portrayal of the news business in the 1950s and ’60s.
The life and work of a noted White House reporter.
A week after John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Jacqueline Kennedy made clear that she wanted to keep certain reporters from writing about her husband’s presidency. Foremost among them was Merriman Smith (1913-1970), whom she derided as a bitter old man. Since 1941, Smith had been the White House reporter for United Press International, and he had become a celebrity in his own right, the author of several books, and a guest of Jack Paar, Johnny Carson, and Merv Griffin on late-night TV. But as reporter and former New York Post editor Sanderson portrays Smith in his debut book, Jacqueline Kennedy had every reason to dislike him: an alcoholic, Smith was a mean drunk; he lashed out in anger and frustration at his first wife and often at his bosses at UPI; he was ruthlessly competitive, always “poised to battle his colleagues to get the story first and right.” Sanderson cites one altercation with a young reporter who dared to contradict Smith about the exact moment when Lyndon Johnson took the oath of office after the assassination. “He practically put a hammer lock on me,” the reporter claimed, due to the one-second difference in time. Sanderson implies that Smith’s concern over details made him a great reporter, but still, he emerges as a difficult, self-important, combative man. Focusing on Smith’s reporting of the Kennedy assassination, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize, Sanderson conveys the tension and confusion after the event, as Smith and other newsmen scrambled to ascertain facts. Smith soon became a favorite of LBJ, who gave him special access and used him “as a conduit for routine information meant to enhance his image.” Drawing on interviews and many oral histories, Sanderson recounts Smith’s tormented life, but he strains to justify why he merits this biography.
More interesting than Smith himself is the author’s portrayal of the news business in the 1950s and ’60s.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5107-1264-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
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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