A wide-ranging biography of perennial also-ran Adlai Stevenson which demonstrates that character is destiny. Stevenson has been the subject of several recent books, but Baker (History/ Goucher Coll.; Mary Todd Lincoln, 1987) affords his life a depth, historical and personal, that few other writers have acknowledged. She traces Stevenson's family history at length to Scotland, then Ulster, the adopted home of many Presbyterian Scots who would later fuel America's expansion beyond the Appalachian Mountains. The Stevensons were actors in that expansion, moving from Pennsylvania across into Kentucky after Daniel Boone opened that territory, later settling in the fertile bottomlands of Illinois, where they would become farmers, solid citizens, and important politicians (Stevenson's grandfather was Grover Cleveland's second-term vice president). Baker suggests that with this pedigree Stevenson could have become nothing but a leader. Long portrayed as a misunderstood saint of American politics, Stevenson turns out in Baker's account to have had the full range of human frailties. He conducted simultaneous affairs with two women—a journalist and a State Department assistant secretary; both evidently believed that Stevenson would divorce his long-suffering wife to marry them. As governor of Illinois, he illegally paid bonuses to favorite political aides from a private fund. ``Blinkered by self-righteousness,'' Baker writes, ``Stevenson overlooked any possibility of influence peddling on him.'' For all that, he emerges as an unjustly abused fellow, smeared by his association with Alger Hiss, derided as an ``egghead'' by Dwight Eisenhower, and calumniated by such right-wing propagandists as Walter Winchell, who, believing Herbert Hoover's assertion that Stevenson was homosexual, proclaimed, ``A vote for Adlai Stevenson is a vote for [transsexual] Christine Jorgensen and a woman in the White House.'' Baker writes with sympathy and considerable vigor, and this fine biography takes a refreshingly long view of an important figure in recent political history.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-393-03874-2
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1995
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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