Three women at moments of crisis in their lives, captured in empathetic and revealing portraits. As Washington Post reporter Walsh points out, the three women are accomplished, well known in their spheres, but not all ready for prime-time celebrity coverage. Meredith Vieira, a television reporter who made it briefly as a 60 Minutes correspondent, struggles with CBS to accommodate her life as both a mother and as a reporter. Rachael Worby, trying to reconcile her dual roles as an orchestra conductor and wife of the governor of West Virginia, is seen during one of her husband's critical campaigns for reelection. Alison Estabrook fights to head the breast surgery group at New York City's Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center after being passed over because she is a woman. There is drama inherent in each of these tales. Will 60 Minutes let Vieira work from home? Can music balance politics in the life of Worby? Will Estabrook reach her goal? The answers are no, maybe, and yes. That can be told because the meat of this book is not in the climaxes, but in the extraordinary way these women reveal themselves. After a long struggle to get pregnant, Vieira has her first child just as her career takes off. Although the network cooperates with her demands for flextime and her husband has a flexible schedule that can meet the demands of parenting even as two more children arrive, she makes the painful discovery that she does not want to relinquish her powers in the home any more than she wants to give up the power of 60 Minutes. It is a not-always-pretty confrontation with self that many women face. The stories of Worby and Estabrook offer similar revelations and a similar resonance. Stories both unique and universal, notable for illuminating the gremlins of thought and feeling that drive most lives.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-684-80401-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1995
Doesn’t dig as deep as it could, but offers a captivating look at the NBA’s greatest era.
NBA legends Bird and Johnson, fierce rivals during their playing days, team up on a mutual career retrospective.
With megastars LeBron James and Kobe Bryant and international superstars like China’s Yao Ming pushing it to ever-greater heights of popularity today, it’s difficult to imagine the NBA in 1979, when financial problems, drug scandals and racial issues threatened to destroy the fledgling league. Fortunately, that year marked the coming of two young saviors—one a flashy, charismatic African-American and the other a cocky, blond, self-described “hick.” Arriving fresh off a showdown in the NCAA championship game in which Johnson’s Michigan State Spartans defeated Bird’s Indiana State Sycamores—still the highest-rated college basketball game ever—the duo changed the course of history not just for the league, but the sport itself. While the pair’s on-court accomplishments have been exhaustively chronicled, the narrative hook here is unprecedented insight and commentary from the stars themselves on their unique relationship, a compelling mixture of bitter rivalry and mutual admiration. This snapshot of their respective careers delves with varying degrees of depth into the lives of each man and their on- and off-court achievements, including the historic championship games between Johnson’s Lakers and Bird’s Celtics, their trailblazing endorsement deals and Johnson’s stunning announcement in 1991 that he had tested positive for HIV. Ironically, this nostalgic chronicle about the two men who, along with Michael Jordan, turned more fans onto NBA basketball than any other players, will likely appeal primarily to a narrow cross-section of readers: Bird/Magic fans and hardcore hoop-heads.
Doesn’t dig as deep as it could, but offers a captivating look at the NBA’s greatest era.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-547-22547-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
The acclaimed author of My Own Country (1996) turns his gaze inward to a pair of crises that hit even closer to home than the AIDS epidemic of which he wrote previously. Verghese took a teaching position at Texas Tech’s medical school, and it’s his arrival in the unfamiliar city of El Paso that triggers the events of his second book (parts of which appeared in the New Yorker). His marriage, already on the rocks in My Own Country, has collapsed utterly and the couple agree to a separation. In a new job in a new city, he finds himself more alone than he has ever been. But he becomes acquainted with a charming fourth-year student on his rotation, David, a former professional tennis player from Australia. Verghese, an ardent amateur himself, begins to play regularly with David and the two become close friends, indeed deeply dependent on each other. Gradually, the younger man begins to confide in his teacher and friend. David has a secret, known to most of the other students and staff at the teaching hospital but not to the recently arrived Verghese; he is a recovering drug addict whose presence at Tech is only possible if he maintains a rigorous schedule of AA meetings and urine tests. When David relapses and his life begins to spiral out of control, Verghese finds himself drawn into the young man’s troubles. As in his previous book, Verghese distinguishes himself by virtue not only of tremendous writing skill—he has a talented diagnostician’s observant eye and a gift for description—but also by his great humanity and humility. Verghese manages to recount the story of the failure of his marriage without recriminations and with a remarkable evenhandedness. Likewise, he tells David’s story honestly and movingly. Although it runs down a little in the last 50 pages or so, this is a compulsively readable and painful book, a work of compassion and intelligence.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-06-017405-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1998
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