Exhilarating account of a persevering and undaunted life in science. Ajzenberg-Selove was born in Berlin in 1926 of Polish-Russian parents who later settled in France. Father Misha had a degree as a mining engineer from St. Petersburg—a rare distinction for a poor Jew from Warsaw. He was also something of a genius at landing on his feet—becoming a banker in Berlin, running a sugar-beet factory outside Paris, and later, through good luck and connections, escaping from France and landing the family in America, where he achieved further entrepreneurial successes—all this being important, since, without Misha's encouragement, Faye's life would undoubtedly have been different. (By contrast, her mother was a mezzo-soprano, rather spoiled and pampered.) Misha wanted Faye to become an engineer, and, indeed, she became the only woman enrolled in Michigan's school of engineering. But engineering was not her cup of tea. Physics appealed, however. And this is perhaps the oddest feature of her career: she was absolutely terrible at it. ``My academic work was extremely poor,'' she notes, ``but I loved physics, and I was determined to succeed.'' And succeed she did, carving a name for herself in the nuclear spectroscopy of light elements and marrying another successful physicist: Walter Selove—a choice made for her by Marietta Bohr, Niels' daughter-in-law. Compellingly of interest here are the stories of the couple's wooing, of Faye's zeal for teaching, her hard-fought victory in getting tenure in the physics department of the University of Pennsylvania (where Wally also teaches), and not least her battle against recurrent breast cancer. Inspiring examples of one woman's intelligence, commitment, courage, and endurance. And while she may have wobbled once in physics, she clearly knows how to write.
Pub Date: Feb. 20, 1994
ISBN: 0-8135-2034-7
Page Count: 238
Publisher: Rutgers Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1993
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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