Deep, thoughtful reflections on overcoming personal crisis.
A psychologist’s debut memoir explores the intersection of science and spirituality.
Born in 1947, Alne grew up in Gerritsen Beach, a bucolic section of Brooklyn, New York. His mother suffered from poor health and she turned to alcohol for relief from her pain—a self-destructive pattern that the author unfortunately emulated later as a teenager. Alne struggled with an addiction to drugs—particularly codeine cough syrup, barbiturates, and LSD—but finally kicked the habit and attended Brooklyn College at night. There, he discovered that he loved learning, and that he had a natural aptitude for it. He graduated magna cum laude with a degree in psychology in 1974 and eventually earned a doctorate. He found work as a school psychologist for the New York City Board of Education, but was hobbled—and emotionally scarred—by an unprovoked attack by a group of students in 1991. After a protracted struggle with herniated discs, he was hired to treat patients for the Brooklyn Workers Compensation Board. After he suffered a stroke, he scoured the latest literature on both science and spirituality to discover alternative sources of healing and guidance. Much of this book is devoted to cataloging these intellectual peregrinations; the author offers his views on contemporary physics, biology, and cosmology, which he says have created new portals into understanding the nature of the paranormal. Later chapters discuss the power of faith and prayer as agents of healing and assert that their efficacies are supported by science. This is an eclectic memoir that combines not only autobiographical remembrances, but also stand-alone essays on such subjects as health care and the limitations of a materialistic conception of man. The prose is lucid and anecdotal throughout (“Science is answering religious questions that we have been asking for thousands of years”), even when discussing the latest trends in quantum mechanics. However, the book as a whole is wide-ranging but fractured in its structure, as it tries to do too much in too few pages. That said, it’s a delightfully eccentric look at the potential comity between religion and science from someone who has respect for both.
Deep, thoughtful reflections on overcoming personal crisis.Pub Date: June 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5043-5788-3
Page Count: 194
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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