A meticulously researched and original biography of the firebrand American abolitionist. Mayer began this book after writing a biography of another outspoken nonconformist, Patrick Henry (Son of Thunder, 1986). His treatment of Garrison is decidedly revisionist; whereas other historians have downplayed Garrison’s contribution or portrayed him as a grating extremist, Mayer puts him forward as one of the most pivotal and heroic figures of the 19th century. He repeatedly compares Garrison’s track record on abolitionism with Abraham Lincoln’s, for example, implicitly criticizing the latter’s conciliatory stances on gradual abolition and compensation for slaveholders. Garrison comes across as an agitator of inexhaustible moral courage, who embraced other controversial causes (like women’s rights) eschewed by more moderate reformers. The crucible of his conflicting idealism came with the Civil War; vehemently opposed to war and bloodshed, he still maintained the hope that slavery might be eradicated through this Armageddon. As a researcher, Mayer is at the top of his game; he waded through 35 years— worth of Garrison’s abolitionist newspaper, the Liberator, and had the sense to present its passionate editorials as a fundamental character in the story, evolving with the subject and his cause. In addition, Mayer utilizes countless letters, newspaper accounts, family papers, and journals, making this the richest textual analysis of Garrison—or perhaps any abolitionist—yet to appear. (In fact, one of the most intriguing facets of Mayer’s work is his discussion of the oft-precarious relationships between figures in the abolitionist movement. Garrison and Frederick Douglass maintained a chilly but civil working relationship; Harriet Beecher Stowe was more concerned with saving Garrison’s heretical soul than with contributing more than her fiction to the movement.) Despite its capacious insight, at more than 700 pages, the book could do with some vigorous editing, and readers may lose patience with the author’s repetition of Garrison’s historical importance. This definitive biography is, like its subject matter, unabashed and eloquent, though too loquacious for casual readers.
Pub Date: Oct. 27, 1998
ISBN: 0-312-18740-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1998
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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