A lively but incomplete biography of Admiral Nelson that keeps most strategy below decks and instead concentrates on one of the more celebrated adulteries in history. In doing so, the prolific Hibbert (Cavaliers and Roundheads, 1993, etc.) taps a vein of popular curiosity about Nelson, but deals with that part of Nelson's character that is least interesting. For the truth is that Nelson, aside from his profession, was not a very interesting man. Having left school at 12 to become a midshipman in the Navy, he was vain, sanctimonious about his dedication to duty, hypochondriacal, and often querulous about the inadequacy of the rewards that he received. To the dismay of his admirers who thought her a poseur, he was unable to see through Emma Hamilton, the mistress and then wife of Sir William Hamilton, the minister in Naples, who had taken her over from his nephew and in turn, knowingly or otherwise, shared her with Nelson. This mÇnage Ö trois scandalized Europe and leaves historians, including Hibbert, uncertain as to whether Sir William was aware that his wife had given birth to Nelson's child and whether he truly believed his oft-asserted statement of the purity of their relationship. What is really interesting about Nelson, and what historians, including Hibbert, find difficult to communicate, is the fascination that he roused in his peers: ``I don't know that I ever had a conversation that interested me more,'' wrote the very unimpressionable Duke of Wellington after an interview in which he had initially seen Nelson at his vainglorious worst. Hibbert gives us insight into the human touch that made Nelson beloved by his men but little on the strategic grasp that associated him with the four most devastating defeats suffered by the French Navy and its allies in the Napoleonic Wars. It is almost impossible for Hibbert to write a dull sentence- -King Ferdinand of Naples, he writes, was ``a fundamentally idle man much given to fornication''—and he gives a fine sense of Nelson the man. To understand what made Nelson different from his contemporaries, one will have to read elsewhere.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-201-62457-5
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Addison-Wesley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1994
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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