An illuminating history of early Americans that is especially timely in the ugly, partisan-filled age of Trump.
The acclaimed historian engages in a compelling examination of the complex relationship of the Founding Fathers who eventually served as the second and third presidents of the United States.
It is well-known that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson lived long lives and famously died on the same day, July 4, 1826. But what might be lesser known is that these two men of vastly different personalities and political views went from close allies to enemies to late-in-life friends. Adams was a self-made man who could seem abrupt and did not win admirers easily. Jefferson, on the other hand, was born to a life of privilege and honor, and he acted diplomatically almost without fail. Northerner Adams felt certain that humans could never achieve full equality, but he opposed slavery. Southerner Jefferson seemed to believe in the possibility of equality yet owned slaves. A leading historian of the Revolution and winner of both the Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes, Wood (History/Brown Univ.; The Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth of the United States, 2011, etc.) traces how these two remarkable yet flawed men viewed each other through the decades and how the changing nature of their relationship influenced the public policy of their fledgling nation, at home and overseas. The author is especially adroit at explaining how Adams’ ambassadorship to England and Jefferson’s ambassadorship to France altered their views of the world and to some extent accelerated the conflicts between them. Wood also clearly explains Jefferson’s popularity among nonhistorians, while Adams often seems overlooked in lay discussions of early American history. Among the other well-known personages in the narrative are Abigail Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and Benjamin Rush, all portrayed vividly by the author, whose approachable writing style is equal to his impressive archival research.
An illuminating history of early Americans that is especially timely in the ugly, partisan-filled age of Trump.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2471-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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