Those in search of the real Elizabeth will not find her here, but these interviews are enlightening footnotes to more formal...
A sometimes engaging, occasionally illuminating patchwork of observations and reflections on the Queen of England, as the 50th anniversary of her monarchy approaches.
As with earlier oral biographies, the Strobers (Nixon, 1994, etc.) interviewed hundreds of people for their recollections and comments on the monarch who came to the throne as a young and happy wife and mother and has endured through political crises—the conflicts in Ireland and the Falklands War, etc.—as well as the marital scandals of her children and the throne-shaking controversy on the death of daughter-in-law Diana. The Strobers’ interviewees range across the globe, from Canberra to Coventry, and across classes, from Dukes and Earls to the stud manager of the Queen’s racing stable and the journalist’s ubiquitous fallback, taxi drivers. With the exception of a few internationally known names like Nelson Mandela, Mohamed Al Fayed (Dodi’s father), and Jeffrey Archer, most of them will be unfamiliar to Americans. Organized in a loose chronology, the authors open with touching memories of Elizabeth’s accession to the throne in 1952 (she was in a nature park in Kenya when her father died) and the travails of the House of Windsor, including Edward VIII’s abdication. It moves on to discuss the role of the Queen, and her relationship with her prime ministers (ten so far, from Winston Churchill to Tony Blair). Other chapters look at relationships with the Commonwealth countries and “The Future of the Monarchy”—meaning, will Charles ever make it to the throne and, if he does, what kind of king will he be? The answers are ambivalent. The picture of Elizabeth that emerges is no surprise: a woman dedicated to duty and protocol, stiff on formal occasions, but with a sense of fun and warmth in more private gatherings.
Those in search of the real Elizabeth will not find her here, but these interviews are enlightening footnotes to more formal biographies.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2002
ISBN: 0-7679-0638-1
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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