Biographer and financial expert Grant (Mr. Market Miscalculates: The Bubble Years and Beyond, 2008, etc.) takes the measure of “Czar” Reed, the Gilded Age giant of the Congress.
The great John Singer Sargent painted him; the peerless Augustus Saint-Gaudens sculpted him. Both felt obliged to apologize for not quite capturing the essence of Thomas Brackett Reed (1839–1902), the powerful House Speaker. Of the Sargent portrait, the inveterately sardonic Reed remarked: “I hope my enemies are satisfied.” Where artistic geniuses before him have faltered, it seems churlish to censure Grant for failing to give us the man in full, particularly as he writes with great verve about the political issues that dominated Reed’s era. The author effectively demystifies economic arcana—protective tariff, gold standard, bimetallism, etc.—to breezily instruct readers in the intra-Congress, parliamentary maneuvering and mastery of the rules for which the Speaker is best remembered, even to account for Reed’s unlikely late-life apostasy on issues like women’s suffrage and imperialism. Solving the private Reed, though, poses a difficult problem for Grant—indeed, for any biographer looking to pierce the legendary imperiousness that both attracted and repelled colleagues and constituents. Reed’s massive frame, opaque gaze, formidable intellect and lacerating wit kept contemporaries at arm’s length. He was respected, even feared, but never loved. Notwithstanding his fiercely partisan party service, fellow Republicans preferred the likes of the charismatic and thoroughly dishonest James G. Blaine or the amiable, relentlessly ordinary William McKinley for the presidency. Incorruptible in an era notorious for corruption, Reed, nevertheless, was no earnest reformer in the mode of, say, Democrat Grover Cleveland. He was a fatalist about the business cycle and about mankind, and had “no interest in instructing the impure.” He loathed humbug and grandiloquence, severe handicaps for a politician. Asked in 1896 about his chances for the presidential nomination, Reed responded, “They could do worse—and probably will.”
Flawed, yes, but likely to become the standard biography, at least for now.
Pub Date: May 10, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4165-4493-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
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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