If the life of the American-born scientist Count Rumford had been created in a novel, nobody would believe it. This new biography chronicles all his achievements and escapades. Born near Boston in 1753, Benjamin Thompson showed an early aptitude for scientific subjects and a passion for rigor and organization. At 19, working as a schoolmaster, he married a rich widow who introduced him into society. As Brown (The Big Bang: A History of Explosives, not reviewed) makes clear, Thompson assiduously cultivated his newly forged connections with Royalist authorities. Spying for the British when the Revolution broke out, he fled to England, without his wife and two-year-old daughter, in 1776—never to return. His political connections got him a commission as a full colonel and a knighthood, and his scientific investigations of gunnery won him election to the Royal Society. Then he headed to Bavaria, where he almost instantly won high office, reforming the military and instituting workhouses for the poor—the entire time, apparently, spying for England. Promoted to count, he took the name Rumford, after the New Hampshire town where he had abandoned his wife. As a scientist, he took a particular interest in heat; his experiments not only helped establish the kinetic theory of heat, but led him to develop significant improvements in domestic heating, lighting, and cookery. His discoveries also prompted him to don white clothing in winter, as the best means for preserving body heat—a choice that marked him as eccentric. Back in England, he helped establish the British Institute, a major force for the dissemination of scientific knowledge. Meanwhile, he accumulated a string of mistresses, including the widow of the French chemist Lavoisier, whom he married in 1805. He lived out his final days in Paris, an eccentric to the end. Brown’s telling of Rumford’s tale is somewhat pedestrian, but the mere facts are enough to make this a page-turner. (8 pages b&w illus.)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-7509-2184-6
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
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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