A sprawling study that, though enlightening, takes readers on more of a journey than they may have bargained for.
A wide-ranging biography of the current pope.
Journalist Burns (La Roja: How Soccer Conquered Spain and How Soccer Conquered the World, 2012, etc.) admirably tackles a difficult subject but meets with mixed success. The author’s plan is evident: to introduce readers not only to Jorge Mario Bergoglio (now known as Pope Francis), but also to the setting in which he was raised, Argentina. What Burns presents, however, is largely a political history of modern Argentina, followed by a topical look at the young papacy. The result is unwieldy and untamed. Speaking often in the first person, Burns takes a guardedly positive view of the pope. As a young man, Bergoglio was deeply affected by populist President Juan Perón, and he remained a Peronist at heart throughout his life. Nevertheless, Bergoglio proved himself adept at navigating the terrifyingly choppy political waters of Argentina, surviving (figuratively and literally) a number of regimes and juntas through his years as a public figure. As head of the Jesuits in Argentina, and then as a bishop and later archbishop, Bergoglio found himself as an enforcer against leftist politics among his clergy while simultaneously working on behalf of the poor. Bergoglio is described variously as authoritarian and as pastoral, and Burns recounts a complex man shaped by the always volatile and sometimes-brutal realities of his nation. “While Pope Francis’s spirituality is not in doubt,” the author summarizes, “the life of Jorge Bergoglio, as Jesuit priest and bishop, was far from flawless, and deeply human in its vulnerability and complexity.” Without much of a transition, this imperfect character becomes pope, and the remainder of Burns’ work is dedicated to his papacy, seen from the view of various topics: poverty, economic scandal, gender, sexuality, etc. Francis comes across in each case as mildly positive as well as rather unpredictable.
A sprawling study that, though enlightening, takes readers on more of a journey than they may have bargained for.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-07649-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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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