A loving tribute distinguished more by the many hitherto unseen family photographs than by the familiar memories.
Eleanor Roosevelt’s grandson reprises the familiar events of her life.
The author, who was 20 when Eleanor died in 1962, offers scanty but affectionate recollections of time spent with her, especially the summer vacations at Val-Kill. Built in the 1920s as a refuge where Eleanor could relax with her friends away from her domineering mother-in-law, Sara Delano Roosevelt, Val-Kill was “paradise” for David, his siblings, and their cousins. “There were few rules and even fewer schedules,” and “Grandmère” was always a warm, attentive presence. The author notes that Eleanor had “an amazing facility for engaging even very small children in conversation. [She was] always encouraging me to tell her about myself, the things I was doing, and what interested me, no matter how young I was.” As he recalls the history of the Roosevelts, David also describes his grandmother’s lonely childhood and her close relationship with Teddy Roosevelt, whom she loved and admired, though politics soured staunchly Democratic Eleanor’s relationship with the next generation of Republican Roosevelts. This estrangement, David notes, has ended; the two branches of the family now meet on a regular basis. Quotes from family letters and Eleanor's own writings document the high and low moments of her of life, including her beloved father’s early death, her mother’s coldness, her sense of betrayal when she discovered that FDR had conducted an affair with Lucy Mercer, her role in his administration, and her triumphant efforts to make her own life. Eleanor was bitterly hurt to learn that Lucy Mercer Rutherford was with the president when he died, and David suggests that for much of her life she had to fight depression. Her greatest quality, he observes, was “the ability to be absolutely ordinary and in that simplicity to be most extraordinary.” Mike Wallace’s introduction recalls his 1957 TV interview with Mrs. Roosevelt.
A loving tribute distinguished more by the many hitherto unseen family photographs than by the familiar memories.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-446-52734-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2002
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.
