A priceless Old Left memoir by Shipman (1895-1989), who began as a student activist and became a founding member of the Mexican Communist Party and an intimate of leftists and literati around the globe. Writing from retirement in Texas during the Bush Administration, Shipman—then in his 90s but still taking college courses—tells a story that spans the decades from Wilson to Reagan. As a child, he says, he was so wild that he was sent to a boarding school at age five and didn't come home until he was ready for high school. Launched by Walter Lippmann into a delayed college career at Columbia, the author became a member of Henry Ford's bizarre ``peace-ship'' contingent prior to WW I, as well as a friend to Lorenz Hart, Bertolt Brecht, and the Mankiewicz brothers. Son of a Jewish father who changed both his name and religion, Shipman was a classic rebel and idealist, as well as a tremendously resourceful man who, even while toiling for the CP, worked at various times at The Wall Street Journal, Standard and Poor's, and Dow Jones. Hounded out of the US as a conscientious objector (his father supplied decisive testimony), Shipman fled to Mexico, where he assumed the first of many identities and met everyone from boxing champ Jack Johnson to the legendary Russian diplomat/agent Michael Borodin, who sent him to Haiti to track down a missing courier and a mysterious suitcase. The intrepid author retrieved both, thus becoming Borodin's assistant. Travelling the world for Communism, he ended up associating with Lenin, John Reed, Trotsky, et al. But Shipman couldn't stomach Stalin and, in 1929, he was expelled from the Party for ``petit-bourgeois'' tendencies— although he remained a radical. The story of a shrewd, observant, daring, and hardheaded man who always gravitated to interesting people and issues: both an autobiographical cliffhanger and an important historical document. (Nineteen b&w photographs)
Pub Date: June 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-8014-2180-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Cornell Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1993
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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