The story of the glittering trio who exemplified glamour (and shrewd matchmaking) to a captivated public gets a curiously lifeless treatment from biographer Grafton (Red, Hot, and Rich, 1987). Daughters of renowned brain-surgery pioneer Harvey Cushing, Mary (``Minnie''), Betsey, and Barbara (``Babe''), apt pupils of a strong-willed mother for whom ``marriage was a business,'' lived a saga that would put most romance novelists to shame. Betsey, favorite daughter-in-law of FDR while wife of his son James, traded up to equally well-bred (and much wealthier) John Hay ``Jock'' Whitney. Babe went from socialite Stanley Mortimer, Jr., to CBS founder William S. Paley, a demanding philanderer but rich enough to secure her position as the ``ultimate fashion and social icon of New York's dazzling scene.'' Minnie endured a miserable union with sullen multimillionaire Vincent Astor before establishing a lively artistic salon with a second husband—the impeccably patrician (and openly homosexual) painter James Fosburgh. Only Betsey managed to find marital happiness along with wealth, but none of the sisters blamed adored mother Gogsie. Featuring an unusually varied cast of society, political, and artistic figures—from the British royal family to Truman Capote—what could have been a fun, frothy gossip- fest is instead a leaden recitation of guest lists, jewelry details, and clothing descriptions. Not that Grafton doesn't drop a juicy tidbit or two—the stylish Babe had all her teeth knocked out in a teenage auto accident; Eleanor Roosevelt didn't shave her underarms—but he hedges a lot: the Astors' marriage may not have been consummated, but, then again, Minnie may have been a lesbian; on the other hand, she was Vincent's mistress for years before the wedding. Subjects who deserve at least style, if not substance, get neither in this superficial chronicle. (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-394-58416-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1991
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 2026 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.
