A worthy reexamination of the politician whom many remember fondly today—yet who is still likened to Harold Stassen as a...
Thoughtful biography of the quintessential American liberal who, toward the end of his political career, was “challenging the very premises of the liberalism that he had himself championed.”
Born in 1916 into an Irish-German Catholic family in rural Minnesota, Eugene McCarthy came to exemplify a political philosophy that, writes Sandbrook (History/Univ. of Sheffield), is “best understood in relation to European conservatism rather than American liberalism”: in the ’50s, he, like William Buckley and Eric Voegelin, would call for a “re-Christianization of social institutions” and publicly lament the decline of family values and old-school traditions. Yet McCarthy was squarely in the American liberal tradition by the beginning of the ’60s, when Democratic political leaders embraced New Deal activism domestically while advocating an aggressively anticommunist Pax Americana internationally. A few years later, when it became clear that Lyndon Johnson would accomplish neither, McCarthy found himself in opposition to his own party; as a US senator in 1966, writes Sandbrook, McCarthy’s score as a voter against the conservative coalition was “a creditable 86 percent, in 1967 it fell to 45 percent, barely half of the scores registered by Mondale, Muskie, and the Kennedy brothers” (when McCarthy bothered to show up, that is, for his roll-call attendance was at the bottom of the Democratic roster). Still, he also opposed the Vietnam War, and as a peace candidate gained a following large enough to threaten Hubert Humphrey’s candidacy in the 1968 presidential election. McCarthy effectively squandered any chance of taking the lead, however, through a number of missteps that Sandbrook attributes to arrogance: his loss “was not because of a lack of aptitude, but because of a failure of application.” That failure, Sandbrook suggests, is one reason so few politicos utter the l-word anything but scornfully today.
A worthy reexamination of the politician whom many remember fondly today—yet who is still likened to Harold Stassen as a born loser.Pub Date: March 30, 2004
ISBN: 1-4000-4105-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2004
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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