A rewarding tale of life on the high seas.
An exhilarating depiction of the adventurer, shipbuilder and writer Joshua Slocum, who spent nearly his entire life at sea and was the first man to sail solo across the globe.
It's tough to gauge which accomplishment merits more admiration—that Slocum left home at age 16 to start a heralded career as a deepwater captain or that in the twilight of life, he transformed a decaying sloop into a snug, fast vessel in which he sailed around the planet. Both require unimaginable stamina, courage, intelligence and love, and Slocum had plenty, as recounted in dynamic detail by Wolff (The Edge of Maine, 2005, etc.). Amid the steam revolution, Slocum held unrelenting loyalty to sailing ships, despite the frequent challenges and setbacks he and his family faced while traveling great distances to deliver cargo. On his honeymoon, he was forced to build a rescue boat from his own shipwreck. As a captain aboard the Northern Light, he faced mutiny, and on the Liberdade, smallpox. Throughout, towering storms and touchy international relations made each voyage extremely difficult. Slocum didn’t attempt a life on land until 1889, but he felt emotionally distant from both the culture and his second wife—this was an unsurprisingly brief period in which he spent most of his time rebuilding an old wreck given to him by an acquaintance. Literally and figuratively, the author writes, “when Slocum found himself in a fix he would boat-build his escape.” By 1895, the sloop was reborn as the resplendent Spray, ready for the ocean and equipped (somewhat unbelievably) with the ability to self-sail. This boat took Slocum on his three-year solo trip around the world, a feat unrivalled for more than 25 years afterward. Wolff explores both the global political atmosphere of the time and Slocum's complicated emotional state during inconceivable periods of isolation. The author frequently lauds Slocum's autobiographical works—especially Sailing Alone Around the World (1899)—describing his writing as fresh-voiced and richly nuanced, and he quotes from these publications to add context to the narrative.
A rewarding tale of life on the high seas.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-4342-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 9, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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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