An enjoyable but less-than-objective biography of “one of the most prominent Catholics in the world.”
Biography of the current cardinal from New York.
Journalist Boyle presents a lighthearted, highly positive portrait of Cardinal Timothy Dolan. As a comparably young cardinal whose influence in the Catholic Church has been steadily on the rise for years, Dolan is a good candidate for biographical study. Boyle’s attempt, however, is often too saccharine. She shows him emerging from a stereotypical 1950s suburban household in Missouri, complete with pious parents always willing to sacrifice for their family. The young Dolan attended a new and growing Catholic elementary school and knew from an early age that he wanted to be a priest. After taking a predetermined track through high school and seminary toward that purpose, he was awarded the rare honor of studying at the Pontifical North American College in Rome. From that point on, his rise was nearly meteoric. Boyle’s most substantive chapters concern Dolan’s years as a bishop in St. Louis and as archbishop of Milwaukee, during the height of the child sexual abuse scandals in those cities. Since 2009, Dolan has led the church in New York as archbishop and now as cardinal. Boyle has crafted an approachable and readable book and lays a foundation for those hoping to learn more about this influential church leader. However, her work reads like a commissioned biography far more than a journalistic effort. The book is replete with folksy examples of Dolan’s humor, compassion and wisdom, as well as countless doting quotes from those who have known him. Only occasionally does Boyle offer criticism, and the author herself often effuses praise—e.g., “[Dolan’s] joie de vivre was matched only by his piety.”
An enjoyable but less-than-objective biography of “one of the most prominent Catholics in the world.”Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-250-03287-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014
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
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
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