Bittersweet window into a privileged yet insecure upbringing.
FDR’s eldest grandson nostalgically recounts his childhood growing up in close proximity to his charismatic grandparents.
The author’s mother Anna, FDR’s only daughter, was in the midst of a divorce in 1933 when she moved with three-year-old Curtis and his elder sister into the White House. The siblings instantly became darlings of the press as “Sistie and Buzzie.” Roosevelt captures the delight of living at the White House from the perspective of a child given access to presidential marches, receptions and afternoon teas. But it was also a lonely time: He had a hands-off upbringing ruled by strict routine and spent more time with his nannies than with his mother. He contrasts her approach with that of his great-grandmother, Sara Delano Roosevelt, whose “love was unreserved” during summer vacations at her 1,500-acre Hudson Valley estate. Like the rest of his family, the author was in awe of FDR, whose presence generated “a kind of electricity in the air” and who “was, and remains, my father image.” The drama intensified when eight-year-old Curtis was forced to leave the White House to follow his mother and stepfather to multiple residences in New York and Seattle. He pined for the importance and prestige he felt in the rarefied White House atmosphere, finding respite only when visiting for Christmas celebrations. The author cryptically links his growing apathy and lack of ambition as a teenager to his overbearingly famous family lineage, hypothesizing that he was “suffering from growing up in the orbits of my grandfather and grandmother.” The memoir reveals, however, that Anna, a peremptory and distant mother focused on her famous parents and her love life, was more directly responsible. She sought career opportunities for herself through FDR, eventually undercutting her own mother’s role as his confidant, but denied her son such opportunities as the family’s traditional private schooling. In fact, the author never got as close to FDR’s sun as his mother did, though he longed for it.
Bittersweet window into a privileged yet insecure upbringing.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-58648-554-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2008
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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