An appreciative and unpretentious chronicle, this is required reading for Santana fans and devotees of classic rock legends.
The Mexican-American classic guitar legend (and 2013 Kennedy Center honoree) shares his life before and beneath the rock ’n’ roll spotlight with the assistance of Kahn (The House that Trane Built: The Story of Impulse Records, 2006, etc.) and Miller.
In this frank and impassioned memoir, iconic, influential musician Santana, 67, known for fusing rock and Latin rhythms, weaves together the rhythmic, domestic and spiritual dimensions of his career. A meager, rocky childhood was spent traversing southwestern Mexico to Tijuana and finally San Francisco, all while being greatly influenced by a disciplinarian mother and a romantic, violinist father who “lived to play, and he played to live…what musicians are meant to do.” Generously reflective and well-balanced, Santana’s memoir glides across autobiographical anecdotes of his joyful immersion in music theory and guitar lessons yet also addresses the intense emotional pain and confusion of being molested as a boy. Santana’s burgeoning career as a blues-appreciative guitarist bloomed through decades steeped in Bill Graham–produced shows at the legendary Fillmore venue, admiring Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, the Doors and the Grateful Dead, then into the psychedelic Summer of Love and the first formation of his Latin rock group Santana Blues Band in 1967. Complementing the uproarious stories of the band’s tours are reflections on his personal life, his 34-year marriage and subsequent remarriage, and an exhaustive listing of his friendships with rock luminaries. Charismatic and soulful, Santana writes with the benefit of what he calls a “celestial memory,” whereby only the blessings and beauty of life are measured and celebrated. Even readers skimming for tabloid dirt may be swayed by the respectful purity of Santana’s recollections; his moments of struggle and frustration are handled with the same dignity and grace as his many triumphs.
An appreciative and unpretentious chronicle, this is required reading for Santana fans and devotees of classic rock legends.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-0316244923
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
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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