A well-researched study of one American woman’s enterprising career.
Lape’s exploration of her great-great-grandmother’s life reveals the entrepreneurial spirit of a Midwest madam.
Lizzie’s frequent self-reinventions—and eight marriages—yielded multiple surnames throughout her life. She was born in Whitley County, Kentucky, in the mid-19th century, and was “living the low life in Chicago by the time she was 18.” Her adventures eventually brought her east to Ohio, where she became the owner of multiple establishments of ill repute, including the White Pigeon in Marion, a gathering spot with “the best girls, the best buffet, [and] the best poker games.” Her creative use of limited resources made her an undeniable force, able to navigate the law and even get in the good graces of future president Warren G. Harding. (Lape speculates that Lizzie and Harding, then a newspaper editor, plotted a fake police raid of the White Pigeon in order to catch a Harding competitor red-handed.) However, Lizzie’s motivations and convictions remain matters of conjecture, as the documents Lape has unearthed don’t indicate much about her forebear’s interior life. Lizzie’s outward traits are likewise somewhat murky; readers don’t ever really discover whether she was loud, funny, mean or charming. Yet there are some intriguing insinuations of Lizzie’s personal qualities; for instance, she opportunistically and cleverly volunteered the Pigeon to a revivalist church in 1903, in order to create a mission for unwed mothers—“a win-win opportunity to the community.” Lape also shows how Lizzie demonstrated her political leanings in unusual ways; for example, she named one of her daughters “Mary Jennings Bryan Veon,” after Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan. The author’s genealogical investigations are meticulous, and her admirable process of uncovering the past becomes as much a topic of this biography as Lizzie herself. When Lape broadens the scope of her explorations to consider other subjects, such as the era’s postwar politics, her work is most informative (although she only minimally explores 19th century brothel life). The sections that more narrowly focus on Lizzie and her descendants, however, may be of more limited interest to general readers.
A well-researched study of one American woman’s enterprising career.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2014
ISBN: 978-1492733409
Page Count: 282
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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