A profound love story with lessons for how to live as well as how to die.
A collaborative memoir that provides an honest reckoning with the end of a long, fruitful life.
After being diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2019, Marilyn Yalom suggested to her husband, Irvin, that the two of them, both writers, should write a book documenting her death from the perspective of a couple who had been together and happy for more than 50 years. She believed that it might have something to offer “other couples with one member facing a fatal illness.” As it turns out, she underestimated: The book has countless pieces of wisdom for anyone confronting death. As the two authors alternate chapters, the love between them manifests on the page through their mutual care and sense of togetherness. What emerges is an uncommonly tender portrait of what a strong marriage feels like on the inside. The Yaloms have the advantage of having lived charmed lives—healthy children, rich social lives, meaningful and successful work, deep love—and so face Marilyn’s death without the kinds of life regrets that make the prospect of death even more difficult for those who have a sense of an unlived life. This particular insight is drawn from Irvin’s previous work as one of the most well-known and influential therapists of the past several decades. Among his other specialties he is a leading figure in existential psychology, so death is not a new subject for him. Indeed, readers familiar with his writing will notice repeated material from his previous books. However, considering the circumstances here, the author achieves new depth and poignancy, qualities that are matched by Marilyn’s grace as she hopes to follow Nietzsche’s advice to “die at the right time.” The Yaloms’ distinct voices are complements to each other and gifts to readers.
A profound love story with lessons for how to live as well as how to die.Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5036-1376-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Redwood Press/Stanford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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