As the author writes in a passage that easily describes his book, “the news here is never boring. Tragic and disturbing?...
Every state has its peculiarities, but Florida has an abundance like no other.
On the surface, the Sunshine State evokes images of Disney World, retirement communities, and palm-studded beaches. But as St. Pete Beach resident Wright (Sociology/Univ. of Central Florida) notes in his first book, “in Florida, nothing is ever quite as it seems. Every story has a back story, every point a counterpoint, every ugliness a contrary scene of sublime beauty. Whenever Florida purports to be one thing, it turns out to be another.” Divided into four parts—history, economy, people/politics, and environment—the book amply demonstrates that the last place to find the truth is in the brochures and mass media. Consider Florida’s prominent retirement community, the Villages. Overwhelmingly white and conservative, the area is billed as a sedate pocket to retire and play golf, but the author dispels the myths, fleshing out an entirely different picture: a wild underside featuring “rampant sexual conquest,” a thriving black market in Viagra, golf cart DUIs, and senior bar brawls. “A local gynecologist said that she treated more cases of herpes and HPV in The Villages than she ever did during her stint in Miami,” writes the author. In a state highlighted by its prized orange orchards, good luck finding a Florida-grown orange at the stores, which sell only California imports. Why? Because Florida’s oranges are harvested strictly for its lucrative orange juice industry. And if you think that jug of OJ is fresh-squeezed as advertised, think again; as part of its manufacture, the juice sits in massive tanks for up to a year before bottling. Studded with “factoids, oddments, stories, and back stories,” Wright’s book chronicles his travels throughout this odd state uncovering everything from the truth behind the infamous “hanging chads” of the 2000 election to wild pig attacks and notorious con men.
As the author writes in a passage that easily describes his book, “the news here is never boring. Tragic and disturbing? Often. Zany and funny? Regularly. Just plain weird? Most of the time. But boring? Never.”Pub Date: April 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-18565-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2019
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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