In his first inaugural address, Ronald Reagan referred to Joseph Warren as “a man who might have been one of the greatest...
A fresh biography of an underappreciated figure in American history.
John Trumbull immortalized Dr. Joseph Warren (1741-1775) in his painting The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker’s Hill, which depicted the demise of the young physician and military officer. In his first book, Di Spigna, a speaker and volunteer at Colonial Williamsburg, reminds readers that Warren was more than a man who sacrificed his life for the cause of liberty. The son of a pious Massachusetts farmer, Warren attended Harvard, where the future revolutionary developed his oratorical skills when he was not committing pranks such as nailing his roommates’ shoes to the floor. His training as a physician coincided with the post–French and Indian War crisis between Britain and her American Colonies, and Warren would hold several positions in the Massachusetts resistance: head of the Boston Committee of Correspondence and North End Caucus, president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, and chairman of the Massachusetts Committee of Safety. He delivered two prominent orations on the Boston Massacre, wrote numerous articles and pamphlets, authored the Suffolk Resolves, sent Paul Revere on his famous ride, operated a spy ring, and participated in the battles of Lexington and Concord. In short, Di Spigna persuasively argues that Warren was “a rare combination of statesman and warrior” and that “his effective arsenal of voice, pen, and sword was unrivaled by any other patriot.” Yet the author does not neglect Warren’s medical career. He was one of the most prominent and respected physicians in Massachusetts, inoculating hundreds of people against smallpox without a single death. Warren was also a prominent Mason and devoted family man.
In his first inaugural address, Ronald Reagan referred to Joseph Warren as “a man who might have been one of the greatest among the founding fathers.” Hopefully, Di Spigna’s insightful biography will rekindle public interest in Warren, a man who deserves to be remembered for more than his death at Bunker Hill.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-553-41932-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 8, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
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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