A vigorous, detailed record of the crucial campaign for the presidency during the last bitter stages of the Civil War. Waugh, a journalist with the Christian Science Monitor and a historian (The Class of 1846: From West Point to Appomattox, 1994), brings the skills of both callings to bear on this somewhat unlikely subject and produces a surprisingly lively narrative. As he notes, there have been other studies of Lincoln's uncertain struggle for reelection. Waugh's stands out for its skillful marshalling of a huge cast of characters, from hard-bitten politicos to Confederate spies, some less-than-honorable journalists, and a wide variety of citizens and citizen-soldiers, all of them anxious and exhausted by the war, and for its savvy reading of the forces at work in American society. Startling as it may now seem, at the beginning of the campaign Lincoln was a long shot; many felt that the war had gone on too long and had been mishandled, and that too many freedoms had been abridged in the process. There was also the fact that his Democratic opponent, Gen. George McClellan, seemed to have been ordered from central casting for the part: A handsome ex-soldier, McClellan had gravity and a winning manner with the public. Nonetheless, Lincoln won by a margin of over 400,000 votes (and a staggering electoral college vote of 212 to 21). Waugh traces Lincoln's savvy campaign (which was also, as Lincoln saw it, a referendum on the conduct of the war) in great detail, and his portrait of 19th-century rough-and- tumble politics is fascinating. He points out that the soldiers may have made the difference: By an overwhelming majority, they voted for Lincoln over their former commander. Waugh has taken a frequently overlooked event in the Civil War and found the drama and importance in it. An entertaining and even moving work of popular history. (8 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-517-59766-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1997
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
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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