Nominally a history of Star Trek, this book expands its mission to examining the deepest roots of the cultural phenomenon the TV show has become over the years. Greenwald, whose credits include articles for Wired and Details, describes Star Trek as “the nearest we have to a new global mythology.” Its appeal cuts across racial, ethnic, and religious lines, with stories from a time when all people are united as citizens of Earth. Another dimension of its appeal is that it promises a far-future technology that doesn—t dehumanize us, but places greater stress than ever on the traditional heroic qualities of honor, courage, and idealism. To explore these themes, the author spent considerable time on the soundstage of First Contact, the latest Trek movie, conducted numerous interviews (with Kurt Vonnegut and the Dalai Lama as well as actors and costumed Trekkies), and investigated the manifestations of the show in several foreign countries where one might think its particularly American flavor would lose something in translation. The text is broken up with boxes reproducing everything from “filk song” lyrics (which substitute Trek themes for the words of well-known songs), news clips (the juror kicked off the Whitewater trial for appearing in Trek uniform), the name of the show in various foreign languages, and a black woman astronaut’s story of how she was inspired by Lt. Uhura. The appeal of the show extends from NASA scientists to the German fans married in a Klingon ceremony. Anyone who thinks this book’s subtitle is hyperbole need only look around themselves. The reader may not ultimately buy Greenwald’s characterization of Trek creator Gene Roddenberry as a genius, but it’s hard to read this book without gaining a healthy respect for his creation. Rises above the usual fannish trivia to provide a surprisingly clear-eyed examination of what Trek means—and what that says about us. (For more on Star Trek, see Robert Jenkins and Susan Jenkins, Life Signs, p. 715.)
Pub Date: June 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-87399-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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