Despite a muddled narrative, a haunting portrait of discord emerges.
A founder of ESPN opens a window into his dysfunctional family.
Early on in this unsettling memoir, Rasmussen makes a candid statement about his oldest brother: “Bill entered this world as the perfect baby that became the perfect son, who could do no wrong. And so it would be for the rest of our parents’ lives.” The book covers a lot of ground, from Rasmussen’s boyhood baseball exploits and his serving with the Air Force in Greenland to helping get the ESPN sports network off and running. But its emotional core is his account of a toxic family to which, even from early childhood, he “felt that I didn't belong.” Rasmussen’s parents were forced into marriage after his mother got pregnant. After a daughter was stillborn, his brother Bill was born about 18 months later. He was the “savior” of the marriage, “the anointed one,” while Don, another brother Bob, and sister Vivien “were literally excess baggage.” Don is the “problem child” who spends his “whole life trying to be a part of and accepted as a part of my family.” According to Rasmussen, it was his father and Bill who teamed up to dash his dreams of playing professional baseball in an effort to “maintain [Bill’s] dominance.” The fledgling ESPN gives the family an opportunity to go into business together, but the venture dissolves in acrimony, with Don’s lawyer telling him, “I have never met anyone as nasty as Bill” and that he should try not to be too disappointed about never having a positive relationship with his family. Rasmussen concludes that “no amount of denial can cover the lifelong meanness…that I submitted to.” Rasmussen’s message is diluted by a jumbled narrative structure that hops confusingly between time periods when a linear approach would have been more effective. But the book paints a haunting picture of family dysfunction, and the author’s journey brings him to the hopeful realization that he “survived both [Bill] and Dad and their attempts to keep me down.”
Despite a muddled narrative, a haunting portrait of discord emerges.Pub Date: June 19, 2013
ISBN: 978-1482742022
Page Count: 390
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2013
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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