A well-documented examination of a once-prominent radical.
An intimate portrait of a noted public intellectual.
In a richly detailed biography of writer, editor, and political pundit Max Eastman (1883-1969), Irmscher (English/Indiana Univ.; Louis Agassiz: Creator of American Science, 2013, etc.) draws on his subject’s prolific published works and abundant archival sources, including vast numbers of letters to and from his many lovers. In his own autobiography, Eastman made much of his love affairs, and Irmscher allows them to dominate a biography that reiterates Eastman’s erotic poems, protestations of desire, and his lovers’ ecstatic responses. Eastman was handsome, attractive, and apparently irresistible to women, even into his 80s. Probably a virgin when he married the strong-willed Ida Rauh, he felt immediate remorse: “I had lost, in marrying Ida, my irrational joy in life,” he proclaimed. That joy could be enhanced by all the women “waiting for him, women who wanted to receive him with open arms.” His three wives—he divorced Ida, virtually abandoning her and their son—acquiesced to his affairs, though they were often considerably hurt. When not focused on Eastman’s sex life, Irmscher traces the evolution of his political thought from socialist to radical conservative. As a student at Columbia, he was influenced by John Dewey, who embodied, Eastman believed, “the essence of democracy.” He rallied to keep America out of World War I, and with his activist sister, he campaigned for women’s suffrage. He established his reputation as editor of the leftist journals The Masses and The Liberator, and he publicized and translated Leon Trotsky. But in the 1930s, he became ardently convinced that a spreading “communist conspiracy” threatened American democracy. As Irmscher discovered, “there was no detail of alleged communist infiltration that escaped his attention.” From having friends like John Reed and Edna St. Vincent Millay, he preferred the company of “free market advocates, right-wingers, and libertarians.” In his critical works, he derided the “linguistic gimmickry” of modernist writers and found a home for his views in Reader’s Digest.
A well-documented examination of a once-prominent radical.Pub Date: June 27, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-300-22256-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2017
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
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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