The author concludes that “Being an engineer is in fact a lot like being a paperboy,” and by the end, we’re convinced as...
An engineer (Civil Engineering and History/Duke) who has written about pencils, bridges, and other useful things casts a fond—and analytical—look back at his own 1950s youth and once again discovers mystery and magnificence in the mundane.
Petroski (The Book on the Bookshelf, 1999, etc.) begins near his 12th birthday, when he received what he wanted most: a Schwinn. It arrived unassembled, and Petroski’s father (manually challenged) wisely permitted his more skillful son to put it together. The Schwinn would soon carry young Petroski around Queens on a paper route that he kept for the better part of two-and-a-half years—approximately the timeframe for this marvelous memoir. With his fascination for the pragmatic and historical, Petroski lets few things escape his analysis. He relates some of the history of Queens, the system of numbering houses there, the method for adjusting bicycle spokes, the rules of penny-pitching, the history of the Long Island Press (the paper he delivered), the economics of newspaper-delivery, the history of the bicycle, the differences between American Flyer and Lionel trains, the effects of consuming two aspirin with warm Pepsi, the Dodgers’ move from Brooklyn—and so much more. At one point he confesses, “The closer I looked at things, the more complicated they became.” Lucky for us. Petroski pauses to ponder complications and then explain them in a prose so transparent that at times we are barely aware we are reading. Among the treasures: a terrific description of how he folded a newspaper to keep it from flying apart as it soared from his hand to the subscriber’s porch; and a horrifying account of a brutal algebra teacher’s determination (and failure) to break Petroski’s spirit.
The author concludes that “Being an engineer is in fact a lot like being a paperboy,” and by the end, we’re convinced as well that no metaphor for life is more apt than a paper route. (30 b&w photos throughout)Pub Date: April 2, 2002
ISBN: 0-375-41353-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2002
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
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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