The life and times of a hard-livin' good ol' boy. George Jones is one of the most distinctive singers in all of country music, with a wonderfully expressive voice that ranges from a plaintive tenor to a rumbling baritone. Born in rural East Texas to a hard-working, although alcoholic, father and a God-fearing mother, Jones showed early skill as a singer, performing for pennies on the streets of Beaumont. He began recording in 1954, although his first big hits came in the early '60s with songs drenched in honky-tonk heartache. He married Tammy (``Stand By Your Man'') Wynette in 1969, and they recorded a series of hugely successful duets, beginning with 1973's ``We're Gonna Hold On.'' They continued to record together even after their divorce. In the '80s, Jones had a tendency to coast along on his reputation, both in the choice of his material and in often spiritless (or missed) performances, due to an increasing dependence on alcohol and cocaine. Of late, he has made yet another comeback. This lackluster tell-all suffers from several major problems. It is more a series of vignettes than a coherent life story, so those not already familiar with Jones and his work may be a bit confused. Jones himself admits that the book barely deals with his musical life, skimming over how material was written and recorded. And despite owning up to his own weaknesses for binge drinking, loose women, and cocaine (since overcome, thanks to the devotion of his latest wife, Nancy), Jones offers inconsistent explanations for abusive behavior. He claims he suffered from blackouts after apparently battering then-wife Tammy and trashing their home, but then accuses her of battering him and purposely destroying their property to convince him to stop drinking. Introspection is not the guiding force in this rags-to- excesses story. (32 pages photos, not seen) (Author tour)
Pub Date: April 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-43869-6
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1996
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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