A straightforward, lucid introduction to Elliott’s significant body of work.
A notable British historian’s memoir about his early attraction to the study of imperial Spain and the changing historical methodology since the 1950s.
Impressed by a visit to the Prado in 1950 as a student at Cambridge, Elliott (Modern History Emeritus/Oxford Univ.; Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492–1830, 2006, etc.) resolved to immerse himself in Spanish history. The 17th century is considered the Golden Age for Spain, as well as the beginning of its decline in imperial power. In the 1950s, in the throes of Franco’s grim dictatorship, few historians in Britain wanted to study there, leaving the field wide open. Elliott welcomed the sense of “difference” he felt from the Catholic Iberian experience, and he soon found in the 1640 Catalan rebellion his first lode of research material and fuel for dissertation. Under Franco, the country was smothering under an “authoritarian straitjacket” not unlike the influence Castile wielded over its regional dominions in the 17th century, and Elliott found a poignant, natural sympathy for the oppressed Spanish. In these well-composed essays, the author re-creates his intellectual journey as a historian, his ability to regard Spanish history in a fresh light, free from stereotypes, and his growing reputation as “something of an iconoclast.” Elliott’s essential flexibility led him down welcome and unexpected paths, such as in “transnational history”—the tracing of currents simultaneous in other parts of Europe, especially in England—and in comparative history and biography. The author’s deep, wide erudition in an age of increasing specialization is impressive and accessible for all students of history.
A straightforward, lucid introduction to Elliott’s significant body of work.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-300-18638-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
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