Informative and detailed, but intended for the Kiss Army, not civilians.
Amalgam of material gathered in 1979 and contemporary interviews with members and associates of the veteran theatrical rock band Kiss.
Credit for honesty goes to TV writer/producer Leaf, who opens by urging, “If you are not a Kiss fan, put this book down.” That sums up the flavor and purpose of this collaboration. In 1979, Leaf interviewed the four original Kiss members (Ace Frehley, Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, and Peter Criss) for a never-issued authorized biography focused on the group’s rapid rise from cult band to touring phenomenon. This forms the first section, followed by the contributions of music journalist and Kiss admirer Sharp, who urged Leaf to revive the old manuscript. He begins with a 30-page essay covering the “non-makeup years” following the original band’s breakup, then presents what he terms an “oral history” of Kiss. These interviews provide the heart of this hagiography, discussing nearly every song the band ever recorded and other minutiae—details of tours, merchandising, comic books, behind-the-scenes mishaps—of interest mainly to diehards. Leaf’s workmanlike bio certainly captures the spirit of the brief moment when Kiss was on top, although the sunny, managed tone of the band’s comments to him contrast with Sharp’s account of their commercial decline and infighting. The later interviews are more revealing, although much of the subject matter was covered in Simmons’s acerbic memoir. Since Kiss and Make-Up (2001) devoted much space to slagging recalcitrant members Frehley and Criss, it seems fair that they have their say here; they come across as spacey and vain, but not mean-spirited like Simmons. Surprisingly candid on such topics as the prevalence of payola, sales shenanigans, and chart-fixing in the ’70s music industry, the musicians are vague on the intimate details of their travails in the ’80s and ’90s, before a 1996 reunion in makeup presaged Kiss’s profitable second coming as a metal-nostalgia act.
Informative and detailed, but intended for the Kiss Army, not civilians.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2003
ISBN: 0-446-53073-5
Page Count: 448
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2003
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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