A good-humored, understandably truncated remembrance of an eventful life.
Swedish physician Rosling looks back on the surprising turns his life took.
When he died of pancreatic cancer in 2017, Rosling was in the process of co-writing two books, the bestselling Factfulness (2018), with his son and daughter-in-law, and this one, with journalist Härgestam, who recorded and gave form to his memories. In this English-language version of a book first published in Sweden in the year of his death, the author’s widow writes, “some of the stories are left out, as we thought these would only be interesting in the Swedish context.” Though the omissions will leave some wondering about gaps in the narrative, the text offers plenty of fascinating storytelling. With quiet humor and a bemused sense of amazement at the course of his life, Rosling describes his childhood, when he nearly drowned in a drainage ditch in his rural town; training as a physician, marriage, and the births of his children; years working as a physician in Mozambique; and transformation from clinical practitioner to researcher and academic. Most intriguing are accounts of the author’s attempts to solve puzzles, as when he was confronted in Mozambique by an epidemic of patients whose legs were paralyzed, which he eventually realized was caused by cassava plants that had been too quickly and improperly processed, leaving toxins in the food. Also absorbing are Rosling’s stories of his trips to Cuba, where he had an awkward encounter with Fidel Castro, and descriptions of multiple near-death experiences. The memoir, which includes many photos, stops abruptly just as Rosling was beginning to write Factfulness. While the volume stands on its own as a record of an unintentionally adventurous existence, fans of the author’s previous book should be delighted to get to know the person behind the statistician and abstract thinker.
A good-humored, understandably truncated remembrance of an eventful life.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26689-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Highly instructive for would-be tycoons, with plenty of entertaining interludes.
Well-crafted memoir by the noted media mogul.
Diller’s home life as a youngster was anything but happy; as he writes early on, “The household I grew up in was perfectly dysfunctional.” His mother lived in her own world, his father was knee-deep in business deals, his brother was a heroin addict, and he tried to play by all the rules in order to allay “my fear of the consequences from my incipient homosexuality.” Somehow he fell into the orbit of show business figures like Lew Wasserman (“I was once arrested for joy-riding in Mrs. Wasserman’s Bentley”) and decided that Hollywood offered the right kind of escape. Starting in the proverbial mailroom, he worked his way up to be a junior talent agent, then scrambled up the ladder to become a high-up executive at ABC, head of Paramount and Fox, and an internet pioneer who invested in Match.com and took over a revitalized Ticketmaster. None of that ascent was easy, and Diller documents several key failures along the way, including boardroom betrayals (“What a monumental dope I’d been. They’d taken over the company—in a merger I’d created—with venality and duplicity”) and strategic missteps. It’s no news that the corporate world is rife with misbehavior, but the better part of Diller’s book is his dish on the players: He meets Jack Nicholson at the William Morris Agency, “wandering through the halls, looking for anyone who’d pay attention to him”; hangs out with Warren Beatty, ever on the make; mispronounces Barbra Streisand’s name (“her glare at me as she walked out would have fried a fish”); learns a remedy for prostatitis from Katharine Hepburn (“My father was an expert urological surgeon, and I know what I’m doing”); and much more in one of the better show-biz memoirs to appear in recent years.
Highly instructive for would-be tycoons, with plenty of entertaining interludes.Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9780593317877
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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