Jenkins does a fine job of threading Cody’s personal saga into the histories of the Wild West and world aviation, weaving a...
A rollicking, consistently surprising biography of an American cowboy who, in an unlikely turn of history, ended his life a hero of British aviation.
“Colonel” Samuel Cody wasn’t exactly a con man, but he possessed all the same skills—including a nicely developed sense of when to abandon strict factuality in the interest of telling a good story. For example, it certainly improved his stock as a showman (a career into which he drifted after working as a cowboy and prospector) that he happened to share the last name of his much more famous sometime employer, William “Buffalo Bill” Cody. Never mind, wryly observes Jenkins (Daniel Day-Lewis, 1995), that he was born Samuel Cowdery in Iowa in 1867 and shared no kinship whatever with the man he called “Uncle Bill.” Cody had a talent for self-promotion, to be sure, but he also had a genuine, informed passion for kite-flying (picked up as a pastime to while away the hours on the Great Plains) that soon became (once he figured out how to insert himself into one of his soaring contraptions) a sure way to draw a crowd. Cody took his kite-flying show to England, where he earned a large following and a handsome income. He was less successful as a businessman, but he managed to keep one step ahead of a small army of creditors as he labored to build a powered aircraft. Undeterred by Wilbur Wright’s preemptive flight at Kitty Hawk, Cody soldiered on to build the craft he called a “flying cathedral,” and with it he became the first man in England to take to the air, encouraging other inventors to adapt his designs. When he died in a crash in 1913, Britain gave him a funeral with full military honors.
Jenkins does a fine job of threading Cody’s personal saga into the histories of the Wild West and world aviation, weaving a pleasingly reader-friendly narrative.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-312-24180-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Picador
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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