A boon to fans of English royal history, full of murder and mayhem, but also of solid analysis of a maddeningly complicated...
A rich account of the six long-celebrated women who, for better or worse, shared the throne with the ax-happy Tudor king.
Legend has treated Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard, and Catherine Parr as the hapless victims of a murderous and adulterous blowhard, but Cambridge University fellow Starkey (Elizabeth: The Struggle for the Throne, 2000) shows that almost all of them were as involved as Henry VIII in the problems of governance in a tumultuous time—and thus, in many ways, helped sow the seeds of their own destruction. Henry’s first wife had been brought to England as the wife of his older brother Arthur, the intended heir of Henry VII (“Henry [VIII] was only the spare”), in order at least in part to seal a Spanish-English alliance against France; alas for poor Catherine, who took an activist role as queen, her commitment to Inquisition-style Catholicism and failure to produce an heir led to one of the messiest divorces in recorded history—and one, Starkey gamely writes, in which she had the better lawyers. Though Catherine’s successor, Anne Boleyn, has come to be known as “Anne of a Thousand Days,” she served concurrently with Catherine as a de facto royal for more than ten years until she, too, got caught up in the tangled politics of Henry’s administration, personified here largely through the person of Cardinal Wolsey, who would himself suffer the king’s wrath; Boleyn, Starkey writes, was as much a religious activist as Catherine, but this time in the service of Reform. Jane Seymour pleased Henry, though she too sympathized with rebels against the crown; alas, she died after giving birth to his long-sought heir. Allies and enemies, Henry’s subsequent wives pressed their various causes, sometimes openly defying his edicts. They were strong women all, Starkey argues in this eminently interesting if sometimes overly detailed chronicle, and all (save Catherine Howard) were politically important figures in their own right.
A boon to fans of English royal history, full of murder and mayhem, but also of solid analysis of a maddeningly complicated era.Pub Date: July 10, 2003
ISBN: 0-694-01043-X
Page Count: 880
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2003
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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