A nuanced, expertly written life of much more than a sports hero.
Roberto Clemente wasn’t the best baseball player ever, but he was a great one—and one absolutely necessary for his time and his team.
So claims Washington Post editor Maraniss (They Marched Into Sunlight, 2003) in this agile biography of the immutably proud Clemente, who wore his anger and sense of injustice as a badge of honor, certain that he and his fellow Latino ballplayers were undervalued and exploited. He complained of the sports press, for instance: “They have an open preference for North Americans. Mediocre players receive immense publicity while true stars are not highlighted as they deserve.” He wasn’t thinking selfishly only of himself, but of Orlando Cepeda, Juan Marichal, Julio Roubert and other players who had just crossed a sometimes double color line—not just against blacks, but against just about anyone whose first language was not English. Clemente distinguished himself as a baseball player, going to heroic lengths for the Pittsburgh Pirates (though he really wanted to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers), with whom he spent his entire professional career (1954–72). Clemente’s extraordinary performance in the 1960 World Series is the stuff of legend, with the Pirates beating the Mickey Mantle/Roger Maris–era New York Yankees, and Maraniss delivers an exciting reconstruction. He is clearly at home with the workings of the game, and his account of Clemente’s ability to judge whether a bat was any good from the way it sounded (he was also an amateur woodworker) will please anyone who remembers the pre-aluminum days. Yet Maraniss scores a double play by tracking Clemente’s evolution as a social force: The ballplayer indeed helped break down racial barriers, and was a humanitarian and philanthropist to boot. It seems that Clemente could have played until he was 100, but he died in a plane crash while delivering aid to victims of the 1972 earthquake that shattered Nicaragua.
A nuanced, expertly written life of much more than a sports hero.Pub Date: April 25, 2006
ISBN: 0-7432-1781-0
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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