Spry and readable, this first major Johnson biography delivers the goods on the puckish 87-year-old godfather of American architecture. Although Johnson granted architectural historian Schulze (Mies van der Rohe, not reviewed) extensive interviews, he demanded no editorial control over the project. Consequently, the portrait that emerges is fresh, candid, and relatively free of flattery. Schulze tells how Johnson, born to a wealthy Ohio family, learned early how to ply privilege into power (a gift of stock from his father made him a millionaire by the time he graduated Harvard). Johnson's ``inglorious detour''—his 1930s travels to Germany and dabblings in fascist and Nazi ideologies—are described in detail for the first time. Back stateside, an unrepentant Johnson is shown supporting Father Charles E. Coughlin, as well as forging and deepening influential bonds with Museum of Modern Art director Alfred Barr, author Henry-Russell Hitchcock, and architect Frank Lloyd Wright. It wasn't until 1945, though, that the still- unlicensed Johnson opened his architectural practice. A quick tour of his eclectic output starts with Johnson's own New Canaan, Conn., home, the Glass House of 194849, a homage to Mies van der Rohe, with whom he would later co-design New York's influential Seagram Building. Schulze analyzes Johnson's schemes for Houston's Pennzoil Plaza, California evangelist Robert Schuller's Crystal Cathedral, and New York's Chippendale-topped AT&T headquarters as products of brilliantly dandyish whim and historical pastiche. A master at self-positioning, Johnson is seen in the 1970s and 1980s gravitating away from modernism to a new generation of postmodernists and deconstructivists—notably, Michael Graves, Robert A.M. Stern, Frank Gehry, and Peter Eisenman. Throughout, Schulze pays ample attention to the architect's personal life, including his relentless social hobnobbing and extended romantic relationships with a series of distinctive men, such as artist David Grainger Whitney. An expansive view of Johnson's prickly intellect, ambition, and shifting aesthetic core. (125 photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 17, 1994
ISBN: 0-394-57204-1
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1994
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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