Honest in its queen's-eye sentiments, but so selective in its memories and filled with glaring omissions that it fails...
Flat, unconvincing apologia-cum-memoir of the Shah’s years as ruler of Iran, from the ex-Shabanou.
Pahlavi is on stable ground at first, describing her life as a young girl in a household of middle-class royalists, the social rhythms of her life in Tehran during the 1940s and ’50s, her love of the poets Ferdowsi and Hafez, the education her family sought for her, and her early exposure to religious intolerance—a foretaste of things to come. But when she marries the Shah, her prose takes on a defensive tone that makes her claims for his progressiveness deeply suspect. Pahlavi trumpets the merits of the White Revolution, with its gestures at land reform and its undoubted achievements in literacy and extending the vote to women, but is hesitant to give full voice to the shortcomings of land distribution, to the extent of cronyism and economic corruption, and to the circumscription of political participation. She conveniently forgets to mention the CIA’s involvement in the return of the Shah to power after the period of the National Front, nor does she acknowledge the sway the US had over Iranian relations in the region. She dismisses the horrendous behavior of the secret police (“quite often heavy-handed, as happens in most developing countries”) and fails to accept that by denying open political expression, leaving fundamentalist religious organizations as the only large-scale, organized channels of resistance, the Shah paved the way for fanaticism to have its way in the revolution of 1979. Many readers will also be put off by the author’s slavish devotion to the Shah and his infallibility; she is incredulous and adoring when she notes that her husband, his days numbered, actually made a speech “going so far as to admit that he had made mistakes.”
Honest in its queen's-eye sentiments, but so selective in its memories and filled with glaring omissions that it fails miserably to inspire any faith in the author’s perspective.Pub Date: March 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-4013-5209-X
Page Count: 432
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2003
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
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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