An academic achievement with limited appeal for the nonscholarly audience.
A comprehensive biography of the famed reformer.
Biographical works about Martin Luther (1483-1546) abound. Here, former history professor Schilling (Early Modern European Civilization and Its Political and Cultural Dynamism, 2008, etc.) seeks to capture “the uncontaminated Luther.” As he writes, “this book is not about a Luther in whom we can find the spirit of our own time; this book is about…a Luther whose thoughts and actions are out of kilter with the interests of later generations.” The author portrays Luther in the context of his own time, but the long narrative is rather rambling and far better suited to academics than to general readers. Schilling begins with an in-depth exploration of Luther’s family background and youth, utilizing the name Luder, which Luther used up until his activism began in earnest. The author goes beyond the scope of most biographies by detouring into lengthy histories of towns involved in Luther’s story, the political landscape of the era, and profiles of individuals who were important in Luther’s life. Even Luther’s choice of clothing is carefully discussed. The further Schilling moves into the course of Luther’s story, the more intriguing his exploration of the sociopolitical events that framed the birth of the Reformation. The author makes it a point to dispute myths, none greater than Luther’s nailing the famed 95 theses to the Wittenberg Church door—he notes that if the list was nailed there at all, it was probably not done by Luther, and it was certainly not a dramatic event. Throughout, Schilling admirably avoids the fraught territory of psychoanalysis. His work will appeal most to readers who have exhausted other biographies of Luther and are looking for further minutia about the subject. For general readers seeking a meaningful but accessible biography, there are better choices, such as Derek Wilson’s Out of the Storm (2008).
An academic achievement with limited appeal for the nonscholarly audience.Pub Date: July 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-19-872281-6
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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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