paper 0-8165-1862-9 A Filofax view of 41 days in a homeless shelter. Burns is a college graduate and the editor of an NAACP newsletter, as well as assistant director of an alcohol-recovery program in Tucson, Ariz. It was in that city that he stepped off the bus with some money in his pocket and a history of medical, drug, and alcohol problems. The shelter where he checked in had more than 100 men packed into metal bunk beds in the sleeping area; the bathroom boasted of two urinals and two toilets (without doors), plus six showers and six sinks to serve all these clients. Distressed by the crowded conditions, the odors, and the mix of ill and addicted men, Burns, a navy veteran, nevertheless caught on quickly to the shelter’s routine: up at 5:30 a.m. to turn in laundry, breakfast at 6:00, a rush to the shelter bus for the trip downtown to apply for benefits, look for a job, see a counselor. Unless excepted for one reason or another, shelter residents had to be out of the building between 7:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. each weekday and back for dinner, unless the shelter was informed otherwise. This was the shape of Burns’s days for the next six weeks, as recorded in the journal he kept. He seems to have recorded complete menus of what was served for dinner, as well as detailed notes on his evenings in the shelter. He eavesdropped on intake interviews, read, fretted about contagious diseases, and did his share of clean-up. The schedule and structure helped him to stay sober, although others smoked, did drugs, and drank, sometimes tipping the fragile equilibrium among the residents. Later, on his own, Burns began to drink again, but recovered and moved on to a productive life. Burns is to be commended for hanging tough and pulling through, but these recollections contribute little more than a menu- by-menu tableau of life in a shelter.
Pub Date: Oct. 16, 1998
ISBN: 0-8165-1861-0
Page Count: 140
Publisher: Univ. of Arizona
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1998
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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