An exceptionally thorough and thoughtful account of a spectacular career that helped shape and reflect national...
Beautifully written biography of America’s one best-known preacher, who ingeniously transformed the harsh Calvinism of his famous father into a nurturing, middlebrow faith attractive and accessible to a country prepared to abandon Puritan orthodoxy.
If Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87) is remembered at all today, it’s for a notorious adultery trial near the end of his life. American historian Applegate reminds us, however, that at the height of his career, the likes of Emerson, Whitman, Lincoln and Twain each assumed upon meeting him that Beecher was the greater man. Well-grounded in New England’s doctrinal theology by his father Lyman, “the last great Puritan minister in America,” Henry was disciplined by the competition within his large, talented family (Harriet Beecher Stowe was his sister). After acquiring seasoning from his early pastoral postings in America’s rough west, Beecher brought his dramatic, emotional religious oratory to Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights, which he transformed into a tourist attraction. As a traveling lecturer, a popular contributor to newspapers and magazines and even a novelist, he reached millions worldwide. Though a thoroughgoing member of the Establishment, he was also a moderate advocate of certain progressive views (abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage); similarly, his updated version of Christianity made him seem both cutting-edge and reassuring. Beecher’s fame exceeded that of all but a few men of his time, but Applegate’s sensitive, finely calibrated debut suggests that had he not been Lyman’s son, Henry would have chosen a role other than Moral Authority of the Gilded Age. Addicted to the rush of stardom, later to mammon, and throughout his life to the charms of the many women who were entranced by him, Beecher’s eventual fall reverberated throughout the country.
An exceptionally thorough and thoughtful account of a spectacular career that helped shape and reflect national preoccupations before, during and after the Civil War.Pub Date: June 27, 2006
ISBN: 0-385-51396-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2006
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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