Irreplaceable thoughts from a vanishing generation.
A collection of final timeless reflections from Elie Wiesel (1928-2016).
Chicago Tribune veteran Reich (Portraits in Jazz: 80 Profiles of Jazz Legends, Renegades and Revolutionaries, 2014, etc.), whose parents were survivors of the Holocaust, looks back on his greatest opportunity as a writer and journalist: numerous conversations with the Nobel laureate. This brief but moving work artfully intertwines Wiesel’s words of wisdom with Reich’s quest to further understand his own family’s untold story. The author recalls a youth colored by his parents’ trauma and yet lived in silence, as their experiences during the Holocaust were utterly unspoken topics. Only later in life, when Reich’s father was dead and his mother was struggling with the delusional effects of PTSD, was he able to fully understand their stories. His fortuitous friendship with Wiesel helped him in this quest. In many ways, Reich’s book is a reflection on the lives of the children of Holocaust survivors rather than the survivors themselves. This generation, raised in the shadow of the Holocaust but often without a clear picture of what it really meant for their parents, carries its own particular burden. It is a burden Reich feels keenly and which Wiesel fully appreciated. Beyond calling on the children to do away with feelings of guilt, Wiesel embraces their worth: “To be a child of survivors is to be miraculous. What had to be done for a child to be born! For the survivors to overcome fear.” In their conversations, Reich and Wiesel cover many topics, including anti-Semitism, Israel, forgiveness, and faith. Wiesel’s mindset is almost universally positive, and he never judges the conclusions of other survivors, consistently choosing a path of hope and compassion. Reich does an admirable job of complementing his subject’s sage words with his own perspective without in any way detracting or distracting from it—no easy task yet one the author accomplishes with aplomb.
Irreplaceable thoughts from a vanishing generation.Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64160-134-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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