A well-framed memoir, satisfyingly candid while also abrim with political theory: a filigreed work that maps Norton’s...
Just when you’re ready to pack up the House of Representatives and ship them to Bazookastan, along comes a reminder that some among them actually strive for social justice—such as that rare bird Eleanor Holmes Norton.
In a gratifying autobiography/biography, journalist Lester (The Future of White Men and Other Diversity Dilemmas, not reviewed) tells the story with the help of significant patches of quotations from Norton. Readers will get a strong taste of Norton’s forceful personality and the constancy and vigor of her convictions, which are sometimes expressed with a passion that can make her seem overbearing (“. . . her biggest asset. And her biggest problem,” says Virginia Democrat James Moran). The roots of Norton’s activism are easy to discern in the proud and loving portrayal here of her ancestors, fugitive slaves who fashioned a life in Washington, D.C. The importance of family—a theme Norton will return to again and again in her career—is seen as she describes the importance of her mother and father: “He brought home his insistence upon being treated with respect . . . a black man insisting in every way you could find upon your dignity.” She details her years at Antioch and Yale and with SNCC, her radicalism and grassroots participatory philosophy, then her distancing from the Black Power movement, for “once Black Power became black racism, hey, they left me too. . . . The great unifying philosophies are what keep hold.” That sense of unity is what allowed her to operate so effectively within the public sphere, in New York City’s Human Rights Commission, at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and as congresswoman from Washington, tackling a swath of issues ranging from D.C. statehood through discriminatory practices wherever they might be and on to the Clarence Thomas appointment.
A well-framed memoir, satisfyingly candid while also abrim with political theory: a filigreed work that maps Norton’s evolution as an advocate for human rights.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-7434-0787-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2002
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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