In 1989, major-league pitcher Dravecky—who struggled back from surgery on his cancerous left arm only to break the arm ruinously while pitching—learned a bitter lesson about comebacks. It's too bad he didn't heed it instead of writing this awkward missive. Dravecky has come back to the writing table, though, with a sequel to his 1990 Comeback, which was a far more affecting memoir with its focus on his baseball career and dramatic medical ups and downs. Dravecky's wife has coauthored this update on the family saga (she and Dave contribute alternating passages), which finds the couple suffering the torments of Job, she falling into a major clinical depression and he finally losing the arm to amputation. One can only sympathize with the Draveckys' difficulties, but the tone here is so long-suffering and so self-involved (it's no anomaly that a passage in which the couple goes to the White House and meets Bush contains no impression whatsoever of the President) that only close friends are likely to find much of interest. The problem is compounded by the Draveckys' born-again philosophy that permeates the narrative, since on the page the authors' wrestlings with God lack fresh insight (``God doesn't promise us a life full of mountaintop experiences. There will be valleys to go through too,'' Dave points out): Do we really need Dave's commentary on how Field of Dreams is for him a metaphor for returning to God? Only when the agony's so raw that it seeps through the clichÇs does the book come alive—as in Dave's admission that, finally, he doesn't understand why he has suffered so; or in his description of the pain he's felt in his phantom amputated limb. The Draveckys' sincerity shines through even this orgy of soul-beating, which says a lot for them. (Eight pages of b&w photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Sept. 25, 1992
ISBN: 0-310-58560-0
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Zondervan
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1992
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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