A sometimes glib but genuinely inquisitive memoir about the complicated nature of religious belief.
A writer with a secular Jewish background attends Jerry Falwell’s evangelical church undercover with an exposé in mind, and comes away surprised.
In her first book, Welch (English/George Washington Univ.) relates how she moved from California to Virginia to attend graduate school. Fascinated and somewhat repulsed by the evangelical nature of so many Virginians, the author began visiting Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, the base for famed preacher Falwell. (Falwell was in control at the massive church when Welch began attending. He died in 2007.) Expecting to encounter insincerity and perhaps the corruption seemingly common among celebrity evangelists, Welch quickly realized her experience would be more complicated than anticipated. She discerned that the evangelicals she met seemed happier than her secular friends and relatives. Friendships of a sort blossomed, especially with Alice (like many individuals in the book, not her real name), a member of the church singles group that Welch attended. When the singles group traveled to Alaska hoping to convert at least 100 residents to Christianity, Welch made the journey, calculating she would obtain special insights during such an intense time. The members of the group come across as spiritually sincere but deeply flawed women and men, not all that different in many ways from non-Christians, but definitely living in a world of faith that condemns homosexuality, consumption of alcohol, premarital sex, abortion and, it appears, too much schooling—Welch felt disapproval when her undergraduate education at Yale became known. The author’s mother, determinedly non-Christian, worried about whether her daughter would become trapped in a cult-like atmosphere. Eventually, her mother traveled to Virginia to accompany the author to Thomas Road, giving birth to one of the many memorable extended scenes in the book. Welch separated from the church while writing the book, then traveled back to Lynchburg to reveal her undercover mission face to face.
A sometimes glib but genuinely inquisitive memoir about the complicated nature of religious belief.Pub Date: March 2, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8050-8337-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
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