A wealthy and powerful philanthropist chronicles his exploits on behalf of world Jewry. This memoir from the chairman of the Seagram Company Ltd. (which owns Putnam) and friend of presidents and prime ministers is better than might have been expected, but it's still of extremely limited appeal; the World Jewish Congress, of which Bronfman has been president since 1981, is far removed from the lives of most American Jews. Despite the title, Bronfman writes more about the making of deals rather than the making of a Jew, and he primarily describes his experiences as president of the WJC. Some of the stories are indeed good, such as the way he twisted a reluctant Lech Walesa's arm to condemn Polish anti-Semitism and used his friendship with former Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze to win the freedom of a Jewish prisoner. Also, Bronfman writes with refreshing honesty. Few other Jewish leaders of his stature would write that former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir ``really pissed off President George Bush'' by building Jewish settlements in the occupied territories ``like there was no tomorrow.'' As far as Bronfman is concerned, there was indeed a tomorrow, represented by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, whom he supported philosophically and monetarily. His descriptions of his horror at Rabin's assassination and his anger at those on Israel's right whom he accuses of creating the atmosphere for it—including current prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu—are by far the most powerful parts of the book: ``When I found out that the killer was a Jew . . . my disgust was overwhelming. . . . I called him a loathsome, arrogant cockroach. He demeaned every Jew in the world with his murderous act.'' An interesting and provocative memoir—but likely to be found so by an extremely small audience, limited primarily not just to Jews, but to those who recognize Bronfman as an important figure in Jewish affairs.
Pub Date: Oct. 14, 1996
ISBN: 0-399-14220-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
PERSPECTIVES
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