Intelligence, compassion, gently ironic humor, a total absence of pretension, and a plucky resolve to live well and productively even in a deadening environment—all pervade these letters from prisoner Harris to Shana Alexander, her biographer (Very Much A Lady, 1983) and friend. Convicted of killing her lover, renowned ``Scarsdale Diet'' doctor Herman Tarnower, a bit over ten years ago, Harris was sentenced to New York's Bedford Hills Correction Facility; her repeated appeals for clemency have been unavailing. These letters reveal her efforts to keep spirit and mind alive, chiefly by reading widely and continuing a lifetime commitment to the welfare of children (Harris was a teacher and headmistress of a prestigious girls' school), by teaching a parenting class to her fellow inmates, and by working in a Bedford center for the children of prisoners. Prison life is made more difficult for Harris by the cruel twitting of guards who perceive her as a privileged society lady (`` `Where you goin' in such a hurry, Princess Di? You ain't in no hurry. You got time. You got plenty time' ''). Never dull, despite the unrelieved dullness of the world they describe, the letters occasionally rise to eloquence, are poignant at some moments and sharply humorous at others (as when Harris takes on the charge that Bedford is ``a country club'' and delivers a bitingly satirical comparison from the point of view of someone who once knew country clubs well). Annotations would have helped uninformed readers, by noting, for instance, exactly when Harris was incarcerated and how long her sentence is, what her specific role is in the Children's Center (was she a founder?), and who key characters are—many of whom are mentioned only by first name, most notably ``Hy''—Harris's murdered lover. Memorable missives that will make every reader wonder how much longer Harris will be forced to mark time.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-684-19367-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1991
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
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
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