Engaging memoir by a veteran columnist, reporter, and pundit. Germond is a reporter’s reporter. He is a self-described “fat, bald guy who looked unkempt even in a freshly pressed suit, who played poker and the horses, and who sometimes drank too much.” Attracted to reporting because it was fun and by the beautiful simplicity of the process——find out what happened and put it in the paper”—Germond rose from general reporting in obscure papers to the promised land of journalism: Washington and presidential politics. He is unapologetic in his old-fashioned approach to covering politics: “horse race journalism,” finding out about who is winning or losing rather than analyzing the issues. Issues come and go, but who politicians are, what they are made of, is more important, and interesting, to him. While far from issueless—particularly on race, which becomes a theme throughout, from Germond’s own high school days in Louisiana to his coverage of George Wallace’s presidential campaign, bussing in Boston, Clinton’s relations with Jesse Jackson—this is a portrait gallery, and Germond is at his best when skewering, or more rarely praising, the famous or semifamous. On John McLaughlin, host of the TV program Germond appeared on for 15 years: “His ego [was] always greater than seemed justified by his charm and achievement.” On Bush: “The most vacuous man to occupy the Oval Office in my time.” On Clinton: “The most selfish and egocentric politician I have ever seen.” Of course all politicians are so, but Germond tends to like them; they are willing to take risks, and most of them really do want to do some good. That reporters may become too close to the politicians they cover and that both groups, at least here, are all male, are, however, issues Germond might have pursued in greater depth. Germond takes politics and reporting, though not himself, seriously, and still believes some good may come from both. His optimistic cynicism is refreshing. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-375-50098-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
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
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
