The escapades of Porter illustrate how the men who made the U.S. Navy great succeeded against great odds and across vast...
A technical term–packed mini-history of the War of 1812 and biography of Capt. David Porter (1780 –1843).
Daughan (If By Sea: The Forging of the American Navy—From the Revolution to the War of 1812, 2008, etc.) stuffs the book so full of nautical terms that many readers will require a dictionary to search for words not included in the glossary. Porter began his career as a merchantman when he was 16, and he eventually joined the new U.S. Navy under President John Adams. He fought in the Quasi-War with France in 1798 and spent nearly 20 months in a prison in Tripoli after fighting the Barbary pirates. The War of 1812 gave Porter his chance to advance his career. President James Madison didn’t plan on much help from the Navy until Porter’s Essex took eight prizes and then a ship of the Royal Navy. Madison sent him out again to harass British shipping in the South Atlantic, and eventually, he “doubled the horn” (sailed around) into the Pacific, where he successfully harassed British whalers. While in the Marquesas to resupply the ship, however, Porter overdid it by claiming the islands for the United States, a decision that had lasting effects for only a month after he pulled out. Mostly, he was looking for a fight with the British, who were searching the seas for him. After so many successful encounters, his arrogance would prove his undoing.
The escapades of Porter illustrate how the men who made the U.S. Navy great succeeded against great odds and across vast oceans. Daughan is obviously well-versed in and passionate about his subject, but landlubbers will find the technical terms off-putting.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-465-01962-5
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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