A zesty appreciation, touching as well as entertaining, of one of the nation’s great showmen.
Life and times of the dyed blonde wrestler who inspired everyone from James Brown and Muhammad Ali to Bob Dylan.
Lifestyle journalist Capouya (Real Men Do Yoga: 21 Star Athletes Reveal Their Secrets for Strength, Flexibility and Peak Performance, 2003) can’t quite put over his claim that pro wrestler “Gorgeous” George Wagner (1915–63) invented American pop culture, but he convincingly portrays Wagner blazing a trail from the reticent early 20th century to its more flamboyant later decades. Born into hardworking poverty near Houston, he started wrestling in high school and went pro on the traveling carnival circuit in the ’30s. Wrestling was just as outrageously fake then as it is today, and even more popular; Wagner, an innate showman, took it one step further. During World War II, he dyed his hair blonde and began appearing in frilly outfits made by his scrappy, prankish wife Betty. He assumed the sobriquet “Gorgeous George” and camped up the role of pompous heel. Hoping to see him receive a thrashing, audiences thronged to watch Wagner stride imperiously into arenas after his valet had made a show of disinfecting the wrestling ring with perfume. His career peaked just after WWII, when the new medium of television was looking for cheap programming; almost single-handedly, he made wrestling as ubiquitous on late-’40s TV as reality programming is today. While Capouya’s appreciation for Wagner occasionally seems excessive, he is quite rightly impressed by his subject’s audacity. At a time when popular heroes like the Lone Ranger were models of humility, Gorgeous George made a spectacle of his dandified arrogance. He slid into alcoholism during his final years, but the author paints an affecting portrait of Wagner as someone who fostered a tectonic shift in American culture. Today, Capouya notes approvingly, “George’s grand silliness is a fond recollection.”
A zesty appreciation, touching as well as entertaining, of one of the nation’s great showmen.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-117303-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: HarperEntertainment
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2008
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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