Yeomanly treatment of a man who “wanted desperately to make his fortune but was seduced by the quest for knowledge.” (65...
Rich with incident and novelty, the life of a swashbuckler whose exploits and writings impressed generations of readers, including Darwin and Humboldt, though he’s little remembered today.
Thoroughly dazzled by their subject, the authors aim to redress that injustice. Nonfiction veteran Diana Preston (The Boxer Rebellion, 2000, etc.) and husband Michael convey Dampier’s life in punchy, declarative sentences, strained only by the sheer plentitude of his doings. Most of the material comes from his published works; Dampier pretty much invented the modern travel narrative, fashioning bestsellers borne on “the accessibility of his writing and the exoticism of his experience.” Much of the rest comes from records at the Court of Admiralty; he was also an active buccaneer and a lousy leader of men. Cut of standard English piratical cloth, this rumbustious plunderer of Spanish ships and towns always had an eye skinned for booty or opportunities for ransom. His pioneering qualities and inexhaustible curiosity made him a natural star in an age “when inquiry was fashionable and ingenuity admired.” The Prestons present Dampier as an ambiguous figure, a man who would engage himself in daring and bloody raids, then turn around and write A Discourse of Trade-Winds, Breezes, Storms, Seasons of the Year, Tides, and Currents. He was hungry not just for filthy lucre, which often evaded his grasp, but also for appreciating and appraising the strange lands he visited as he circumnavigated the globe the times. (He visited Australia years before Cook.) No silver or gold? No problem for Dampier, who would take his payment in observations of flamingoes so numerous they looked like “a wall of new brick” (pink, 17th-century brick, that is), or in hunting with the raja of Mindanao, or in savoring the local oysters.
Yeomanly treatment of a man who “wanted desperately to make his fortune but was seduced by the quest for knowledge.” (65 b&w illustrations, 12 maps)Pub Date: April 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-8027-1425-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Walker
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
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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