The philosophy of one of the top coaches in college football is showcased in this loving, uncontroversial autobiography. Robinson coached football at Grambling University, a traditionally African-American school, for 57 years. At the beginning of his career, colleges—and society—were still segregated, but Robinson handled each obstacle with a grace and determination instilled in him from childhood. This book, which is co-written with Lapchick, a columnist for the Sporting News, doesn—t offer Coach Robinson’s play-making techniques or much about the actual events or results of the games. It also skims over any controversy (such as NCAA investigation of violations and possible player criminal activities), focusing instead on Robinson’s modest, life-is-good perspective. Major social events, such as the civil rights movement, are presented as background only, since Robinson’s life was basically carried out in the community of Grambling. He wasn—t an active or vocal participant in any protest, but rather broke down barriers just by doing his job as best as he could and by instilling his values into his student players (“I learned I could accomplish more by working for change within the system rather than openly fighting against it,” he says). College football’s integration occurs through social change and through the evolution of television, the opportunities for black colleges to play in the classics, and because of Robinson’s ability to turn out talented players, many of whom became successful in the NFL, including Doug Williams, Willie Davis, and Willie Brown. What ultimately comes across in this autobiography are Robinson’s basic beliefs: love of family (he is extremely devoted to his wife, Doris), love of country, love of the game, and commitment to responsibility. While one is treated here to Robinson’s genial personality, the beloved coach is too humble to dwell on his accomplishments, so readers will have to find other sources to detail Robinson’s true significance for the game. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen) (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-312-24224-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1999
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
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
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