A loving depiction of a remarkable woman who charmed the world as much as it captivated her.
A longtime literary collaborator traces the life of a young British girl who became a voice for humanity.
Many have fallen under the spell cast by Jane Goodall. Peterson, who edited her two-volume autobiography (Reason For Hope, 1999; Beyond Innocence, 2001), paints his own glowing portrait here. The story begins in a seaside British home, where Valerie Jane was born, in 1933, cared for a menagerie of pets and spent her days reading Doctor Doolittle. She grew up, went to school and in 1955 got an invitation to spend several months in Africa. Her passion for animals got her introduced to anthropologist Louis Leakey, who envisioned a scientific study of chimpanzees living freely in the forest. Within a few years, the animal lover was on the edge of a crystal-blue lake surrounded by a lush emerald jungle. Day after day, Goodall dutifully headed into the forest, where her persistence eventually paid off. She developed a comfortable familiarity with the chimpanzees she studied, and her observations made her a household name. Peterson’s pacing is particularly good, and the jungle never lacks for drama: There are love affairs both animal and human, as well as struggle, death and, ultimately, triumph. Though Peterson tends to gloss over the unhappier parts of his subject’s life, much of her is exposed here. The reader sees Goodall as a disarming but determined advocate and activist who changed the lives of all who met her, whether human or beast. She adapted to her environment, but never forgot who she was. By the end, she is still young Valerie Jane, traveling the world to share her love of animals with the rest of humanity.
A loving depiction of a remarkable woman who charmed the world as much as it captivated her.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2006
ISBN: 0-395-85405-9
Page Count: 752
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2006
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
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
