Perhaps the clue to this odd rehashing of questions about life and death lies in the credentials of the author: Applewhite's (Cosmic Fishing, 1977) career includes long-term collaboration with Buckminster Fuller (Applewhite co-authored Synergetics) and 25 years as ``one of the chief sifters of intelligence for the CIA.'' Both occupations demand a fiercely inquiring mind, able to rove over the great and the trivial, picking up nuggets along the way. And so Applewhite has in this compendium of conjectures and facts about the phenomena of life and death, the myriad attempts to define them and to distinguish the biological from the merely material. He begins with acknowledging the elusiveness of the goal; there is no scientific definition of life. Indeed, he is quick to acknowledge that right-to-life debates about when life begins are meaningless and irrelevant to biologists, who banish the topic to religion and metaphysics. In due course, he deals with the physics, chemistry, and molecular biology of biota in all forms from borderline viruses to man, with appropriate excursions into cosmology, evolution, sexuality, Freud, cell and molecular biology, the genetic code, the mind-brain conundrum, aging, disease, near- death experiences, death, and immortality. Nearly every page quotes an authority (e.g., Schrîdinger, Ernst Mayr, E.O. Wilson, S.J. Gould). A recurrent theme is the human drive to classify and organize, often resulting in specialization and hierarchical ordering. There is even a long appendix enumerating the many- splintered fields that constitute biology today. The main point of all this erudition seems to be that we don't have answers and that at best we have to live with dualities: identity and change, chance and necessity. ``Ambivalence and ambiguity prevail.'' No news there!
Pub Date: June 28, 1991
ISBN: 0-312-05944-2
Page Count: 512
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1991
The author’s sincere sermon—at times analytical, at times hortatory—remains a hopeful one.
New York Times columnist Brooks (The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character and Achievement, 2011, etc.) returns with another volume that walks the thin line between self-help and cultural criticism.
Sandwiched between his introduction and conclusion are eight chapters that profile exemplars (Samuel Johnson and Michel de Montaigne are textual roommates) whose lives can, in Brooks’ view, show us the light. Given the author’s conservative bent in his column, readers may be surprised to discover that his cast includes some notable leftists, including Frances Perkins, Dorothy Day, and A. Philip Randolph. (Also included are Gens. Eisenhower and Marshall, Augustine, and George Eliot.) Throughout the book, Brooks’ pattern is fairly consistent: he sketches each individual’s life, highlighting struggles won and weaknesses overcome (or not), and extracts lessons for the rest of us. In general, he celebrates hard work, humility, self-effacement, and devotion to a true vocation. Early in his text, he adapts the “Adam I and Adam II” construction from the work of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, Adam I being the more external, career-driven human, Adam II the one who “wants to have a serene inner character.” At times, this veers near the Devil Bugs Bunny and Angel Bugs that sit on the cartoon character’s shoulders at critical moments. Brooks liberally seasons the narrative with many allusions to history, philosophy, and literature. Viktor Frankl, Edgar Allan Poe, Paul Tillich, William and Henry James, Matthew Arnold, Virginia Woolf—these are but a few who pop up. Although Brooks goes after the selfie generation, he does so in a fairly nuanced way, noting that it was really the World War II Greatest Generation who started the ball rolling. He is careful to emphasize that no one—even those he profiles—is anywhere near flawless.
The author’s sincere sermon—at times analytical, at times hortatory—remains a hopeful one.Pub Date: April 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9325-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An informative, nostalgic evocation of a special urban dining experience.
An account of once-popular New York restaurants that had a rich social and cultural history.
“Since, by choice or historical necessity, exile and travel were defining aspects of Jewish life, somewhere a Jew was always eating out,” observes cartoonist and MacArthur fellow Katchor (Illustration/Parsons, the New School; Hand-Drying in America, 2013, etc.) in his exhaustively researched, entertaining, and profusely illustrated history of Jewish dining preferences and practices. The Garden of Eden, he notes wryly, was “the first private eating place open to the public,” serving as a model for all the restaurants that came after: cafes, cafeterias, buffets, milk halls, lunch counters, diners, delicatessens, and, especially, dairy restaurants, a favorite destination among New York Jews, which Katchor remembers from his wanderings around the city as a young adult. Dairy restaurants, because they served no meat, attracted diners who observed kosher laws; many boasted a long menu that included items such as mushroom cutlet, blintzes, broiled fish, vegetarian liver, and fried eggplant steak. Attracted by the homey appearance and “forlorn” atmosphere of these restaurants, Katchor set out to uncover their history, engaging in years of “aimless reading in the libraries of New York and on the pages of the internet,” where he found menus, memoirs, telephone directories, newspaper ads, fiction, and food histories that fill the pages of his book with colorful anecdotes, trivia, and food lore. Although dairy restaurants were popular with Jewish immigrants, their advent in the U.S. predated immigrants’ demand for Eastern European meatless dishes. The milk hall, often located in parks, resorts, or spas, gained popularity throughout 19th-century Europe. Franz Kafka, for example, treated himself to a glass of sour milk from a milk pavilion after a day in a Prague park. Jews were not alone in embracing vegetarianism. In Europe and America, shunning meat was inspired by several causes, including utopian socialism, which sought to distance itself from “the beef-eating aristocracy”; ethical preferences; and health concerns. A meatless diet relieved digestive problems, many sufferers found.
An informative, nostalgic evocation of a special urban dining experience.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8052-4219-5
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Schocken
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
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