A detailed chronology of the rise of a popular magazine.
The story behind one of the founders of Essence magazine.
In 1968, after the deaths of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, with blacks rioting across America, the last thing most people were thinking of was launching a magazine geared toward black women. And yet, in 1969, that's exactly what Lewis and three other men, none of who had any magazine experience, did. For the first five years, funding was a major issue, but then the magazine, which originally was going to be called Sapphire, "turned the corner, looking as if it might actually become a Thoroughbred and start running in the black." Essence did become that thoroughbred, with a circulation of more than 1 million readers. The concept of success and empowerment became the focus, which, for black women at the time, was definitely a new idea. Lewis combines stories of his childhood in the 1940s and ’50s in Virginia—where he worked long hours in the field alongside his grandparents and lived without running water or electricity—with the rise of the magazine. Readers can see firsthand how the strength and perseverance that were instilled early on aided Lewis through the multiple obstacles he encountered in the magazine business. Bickering and infighting between various editors, a lack of respect among the founding partners, passive-aggressive tactics in the management, and the corruption of power and a possible takeover of the company threatened the future of the magazine. All of this caused Lewis such aggravation that he broke out in hives; ultimately, however, the magazine prevailed. After 35 years, Lewis is considered a leading magazine publisher in the country; through his modest and sincere voice, readers will understand why.
A detailed chronology of the rise of a popular magazine.Pub Date: June 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-0348-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2014
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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