Magic's second autobiography, far richer than his first (Magic, 1983), for this one (written with Novak, coauthor of autobiographies of Nancy Reagan, Lee Iacocca, etc.) details not only the prestidigitation of the NBA's greatest point guard but also the stunning 1991 revelation of HIV infection that turned Johnson into a world celebrity. To get right to what everyone is waiting for, Magic talks candidly about his sexual promiscuity and his disease. Squelching rumors that he's gay, he declares that ``my pleasure was being with women''—droves of them. ``I was stupid not to take precautions,'' he says. The terrible weeks surrounding his November 7th retirement from basketball get day-by-day coverage, as he reels upon learning of his infection; is buoyed by the love of family, fellow athletes, and fans; and makes his dramatic appearance on Arsenio Hall. Magic raps George Bush for waffling on AIDS policy, and he pledges that ``I'm going all out to fight'' the disease. The poignancy of his new role is underscored by the amazing years that preceded it. Strict, loving parents and a childhood of nonstop basketball blossom into a decade of NBA greatness. The epiphanies tumble out: rise of the Laker dynasty, war with the Celtics, MVP award. The Magic carpet ride goes on after retirement: the 1992 All-Star Game, where Magic proved that HIV-positive and athletic brilliance can go together; the Olympic Dream Team. Even as the book goes to press, he ponders rejoining the NBA, but knows that his work is on a different court now: ``I started working for God's agenda. I believe He's got a mission for me—to help make society more aware, and to get people to care.'' Filled with energy and good will: a small miracle, given the circumstances, but just what one expects from Magic. A lock for a fast-break to the bestseller lists. (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-679-41569-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1992
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
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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