An appealing tasting menu for the banquet that is Lincoln.
Essays crafted from C-SPAN interviews of 55 writers on Lincoln.
As the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth approaches, this collection serves as a useful introduction to the startling depth of the Lincoln discussion among scholars during the past decade and a half. Many of the contributors—e.g., Allen C. Guelzo, David Herbert Donald, Stephen B. Oates, Harold Holzer, James M. McPherson, Mark Neely Jr.—are either Lincoln or Civil War–era specialists. Others are notable historians who have written important Lincoln-centered books—e.g., Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, Jay Winik’s April 1865: The Month That Saved America, Garry Wills’s Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America. These scholars offer illuminating insights, all more gracefully explained and profitably explored in the books that prompted the conversations captured here, as Lamb (Booknotes: Life Stories: Notable Biographers on the People Who Shaped Our World, 1999, etc.) and C-SPAN president Swain readily acknowledge. The collection’s chief delight, particularly for readers already well-versed in Lincolniana, lies in the odd-angle assessments contributed by historians better known for their work apart from Lincoln, such as Merrill D. Peterson, Gordon S. Wood, Robert Remini, Richard Norton Smith, David Reynolds and H.W. Brands, or in the nuggets offered by observers from different disciplines such as art, economics, criticism and journalism. The essays are roughly divided into groups centering on Lincoln’s path to the White House, his character, his performance as a wartime president and his iconic historical status. The editors’ big-tent presentation makes room for dissenting voices from “the church of Lincoln”—the sometimes self-serving scholarly “industry” that’s grown up around the 16th president—and they allow Lincoln to speak for himself, reprinting seven of his speeches and an excerpt from the Charleston debate with Stephen Douglas. Mini-biographies of the contributors serve both as a tribute to the variety and distinction of the assembled voices and as a helpful guide for those eager to learn more.
An appealing tasting menu for the banquet that is Lincoln.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-58648-676-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2008
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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