A moving demonstration of how strength of mind and character helped one man stand tall despite the loss of his legs.
One man's account of life before and after the Boston Marathon bombing.
While Bauman waited near the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon, he happened to notice a man in the crowd: "There was something off about him….He had on a hooded jacket that seemed too heavy, even on a cool day. The thing that really struck me, though, was his demeanor. Everyone was cheering and watching the race….Except this guy….He was all business." Bauman had just looked into the eyes of Tamerlan Tsarnaev a few seconds before his pressure-cooker bomb exploded, taking Bauman's legs with it. With the help of Witter (co-author: Until I Say Good-Bye: My Year of Living with Joy, 2013, etc.), Bauman recounts his story of that day and the months that followed as he worked through excruciating pain, surgeries and rehab. He struggled with anger and depression at what had happened to him and the unexpected and sometimes-unwelcome focus of thousands of strangers. By losing his legs but remaining optimistic and upbeat in front of the cameras, he became a symbol of hope, and he adroitly addresses the emotional push and pull of wanting to be strong for others while feeling weak and extremely vulnerable inside. He leaned heavily on new friends and his girlfriend, Erin, a woman he had broken up with a few weeks before the marathon took place. Gritty details of how his life changed after the bombing intermingle with inspiring moments of throwing the first pitch at a Red Sox game or waving the flag before a Bruins hockey game. Although he lost his legs and his life is permanently changed, Bauman refuses to let those circumstances hold him back.
A moving demonstration of how strength of mind and character helped one man stand tall despite the loss of his legs.Pub Date: April 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4555-8437-6
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
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
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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