An illuminating account of how a great thinker with insatiable curiosity overcame a difficult childhood through his love of...
A titan in his field recounts professional and personal achievements.
Growing up impoverished in a hardscrabble Boston suburb, Aronson never dreamed that one day he would teach at Harvard, let alone be considered one of the preeminent psychologists of the 20th century. The son of a Russian émigré who lost everything in the Depression, the author describes himself as a “painfully shy” and bullied boy always compared unfavorably to his star sibling, Jason. His brother nurtured him, however, imparting many valuable life lessons and insisting that he attend college despite financial hardship and poor grades. In perhaps his first social-learning experiment, Aronson decided to act “as if” he were outgoing and relaxed his first semester at Brandeis. This strategy was effective, and with newfound popularity came increased confidence. Always interested in the basis of others’ beliefs, allegiances and opinions, he selected social psychologist Leon Festinger—famous for his theory of cognitive dissonance—as his mentor, and then designed an experiment that emphasized self-concept, transforming the focus of this field of study. During the next five decades, Aronson remained at the center of dynamic developments in the field. This warm, humble and brilliant man takes pride as much in being a successful teacher, husband, father and friend as in his academic accomplishments. He peppers the narrative with amusing anecdotes about luminaries and colleagues such as Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (now Ram Dass), who asked for his help with the design of their LSD experiments. A humanist who led encounter groups in the ’70s and created the jigsaw classroom to address discrimination in the era of enforced school desegregation in Texas, the author demonstrates dramatically the real-world impact of research. His descriptions of experimental design and theory are thorough yet accessible to the average reader, but it is his profound insights, observations and compassion that make this a fascinating read.
An illuminating account of how a great thinker with insatiable curiosity overcame a difficult childhood through his love of social science.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-465-01833-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2010
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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