A perfect complement to Stacey Schiff’s excellent Cleopatra: A Life (2010). Readers interested in Cleopatra and her world...
Egyptologist Fletcher (The Search for Nefertiti, 2004) takes on the legendary Egyptian queen.
The author not only fills in the blanks but also provides incredible detail about the lives of Egyptians during the 300-year reign of the Ptolemies. Beginning with the conquests of Alexander the Great and his search for a site to establish his eponymous city in Egypt, the author effortlessly examines the facts. Among numerous others, Fletcher exposes the largely unknown stories of Caesar’s epilepsy, Cleopatra’s vast intelligence and Mark Antony’s dereliction of duty. Readers will be pleased to discover that many of the Cleopatra myths are based in fact. She really did have herself delivered to Caesar—whether in a sack or rolled in a carpet is immaterial—and there’s also a much more plausible version of her suicide. Fletcher reveals a brilliant politician who knew enough to learn the language of her people in addition to the traditional Greek of Alexandria. In the years when the annual floods didn’t appear, she quickly opened her stores to feed the country and win their hearts. Her parties were legendary; it was not unusual for guests to dine on gold or silver service and then have it, as well as the couch they reclined on, presented to them as gifts. While the Roman Empire conquered a great deal of the known world, Cleopatra surely got the better of Rome, controlling two of the empire’s strongest leaders with her financial support, wit and sexuality. Neither Caesar nor Antony would ever have been able to control the Eastern part of the Roman Empire without Cleopatra. In return, Egypt received vast lands, incredible incomes and four heirs with impeccable bloodlines.
A perfect complement to Stacey Schiff’s excellent Cleopatra: A Life (2010). Readers interested in Cleopatra and her world are advised to read both.Pub Date: April 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-058558-7
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2011
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
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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