by Jimmy Carter ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 27, 2018
Intimate insights from one of America’s most prolific presidential authors.
A highly personal reflection on faith—in God, in humanity, and in oneself.
In his latest, Carter (A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety, 2015, etc.), well-known for his Christian beliefs and lifelong involvement in his local church, continues to investigate his faith. Though the narrative tends to ramble, the author provides ample wisdom and fascinating insights into his past. While mostly about the divine, faith, he writes, touches on other aspects of life as well: “There is another kind of faith, perhaps more difficult to sustain: having a firm belief in yourself and in other people, or in a seemingly impossible dream.” He stresses the importance of having faith in our neighbor and, when warranted, in government. Nevertheless, it is religious faith to which the former president most often refers, and in the book’s most meaningful passages, he explores the story of his own struggles with faith and with doubt. While he was in the Navy, immersed in the new science of nuclear energy, Carter turned to the writings of liberal contemporary theologians such as Rudolf Bultmann and the Niebuhr brothers to reconcile his traditional Christian background with the modern world in which he was living and working. Carter’s father’s death, election losses, and his own struggle with cancer all further shaped his faith. “To me, ‘faith’ is not just a noun but also a verb,” he notes, meaning that a life lived in faith brings about answers to questions and guidance along life’s path. Of course, politics feature prominently in the book, as well; throughout, the former president discusses domestic and foreign policy as he lived it and as it stands today. There are curmudgeonly moments, unfortunately, when Carter dwells on how everything in America seems to have worsened over time, but overall the tone is positive. “My faith is the key to my optimism,” he writes.
Intimate insights from one of America’s most prolific presidential authors.Pub Date: March 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-8441-3
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2018
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by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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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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by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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