An illuminating look at the impact of a life-changing diagnosis.
A retired engineer recounts a traumatic brain injury.
In this memoir, Barry recalls enjoying a healthy, active life. As president of a research and development engineering firm, the 51-year-old executive was professionally fulfilled but also looking forward to retirement: shuttling between his New England home and his lakeside cottage; enjoying boating; spending time with his adult son and stepchildren; and taking more bike trips with his beloved wife, a schoolteacher. Then one day in 2012, everything changed. While on a bicycle trip in Vermont, the author experienced a bad fall that resulted in a traumatic brain injury. After numerous medical procedures, including a tracheostomy and the installation of a feeding tube as well as a monthslong stint in rehab, Barry sought to rebuild a life altered in every way possible. Because their vacation house was virtually inaccessible to the author, who used a wheelchair, he and his wife determined that they must give it up. Barry could no longer drive due to weakened vision, and though he returned to work in a limited capacity, he soon retired earlier than planned. But thanks to love, faith, and good fortune, he was able to continue bicycling and racing—using various recumbent tricycles—and do many things independently, such as making his way around his home while his wife was at work and communicating via email. He also rediscovered a passion for writing and decided to share his journey with readers. This short but informative memoir, which features family photographs, showcases the author’s straightforward voice and copious self-awareness. Despite the significant obstacles that came with a TBI, Barry recognized how lucky he had been throughout the ordeal—beginning with the passersby who came upon him immediately after he was injured and called for help. The book’s first half is a play-by-play of the author’s various procedures and therapies as he adjusted to a new way of existing, and the second half is devoted to larger topics, like Barry’s strong Roman Catholic faith, his “day in the life” routines and mobility aids, and his hobbies, such as baking bread and entertaining at home.
An illuminating look at the impact of a life-changing diagnosis.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9781578691227
Page Count: 148
Publisher: Rootstock Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.
A decidedly warts-and-all portrait of the man many consider to be America’s greatest writer.
It makes sense that distinguished biographer Chernow (Washington: A Life and Alexander Hamilton) has followed up his life of Ulysses S. Grant with one of Mark Twain: Twain, after all, pulled Grant out of near bankruptcy by publishing the ex-president’s Civil War memoir under extremely favorable royalty terms. The act reflected Twain’s inborn generosity and his near pathological fear of poverty, the prime mover for the constant activity that characterized the author’s life. As Chernow writes, Twain was “a protean figure who played the role of printer, pilot, miner, journalist, novelist, platform artist, toastmaster, publisher, art patron, pundit, polemicist, inventor, crusader, investor, and maverick.” He was also slippery: Twain left his beloved Mississippi River for the Nevada gold fields as a deserter from the Confederate militia, moved farther west to California to avoid being jailed for feuding, took up his pseudonym to stay a step ahead of anyone looking for Samuel Clemens, especially creditors. Twain’s flaws were many in his own day. Problematic in our own time is a casual racism that faded as he grew older (charting that “evolution in matters of racial tolerance” is one of the great strengths of Chernow’s book). Harder to explain away is Twain’s well-known but discomfiting attraction to adolescent and even preadolescent girls, recruiting “angel-fish” to keep him company and angrily declaring when asked, “It isn’t the public’s affair.” While Twain emerges from Chernow’s pages as the masterful—if sometimes wrathful and vengeful—writer that he is now widely recognized to be, he had other complexities, among them a certain gullibility as a businessman that kept that much-feared poverty often close to his door, as well as an overarchingly gloomy view of the human condition that seemed incongruous with his reputation, then and now, as a humanist.
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780525561729
Page Count: 1200
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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