A convincing but dense history of the early years of the Red Cross, presented as a cautionary study in moral and political compromise and of assimilation into the international military machine. Beginning with the shared interest of Swiss philanthropist Gustave Moynier and French writer Henry Dunant in a soldiers' aid society, historian Hutchinson (Simon Fraser Univ.) moves quickly to the Geneva Conference of 1863, where the Red Cross, and the conflicts associated with it, take shape. Social crusaders aiming for ``higher civilization'' and military opportunists who believe the organization can serve nationalistic and military goals are the book's central antagonists. Changes over the years show the winner: By 1906, according to Hutchinson, the Red Cross had shifted toward the needs of ``states and armies,'' not social betterment. WW I Red Cross posters make the marriage of voluntary aid and patriotism plain: One poster depicting the American and Red Cross flags announced, ``Loyalty to One Means Loyalty to Both.'' The conflicts among the founders of the Red Cross are fascinating, but they are not as successfully highlighted here (in part, possibly, because Hutchinson did not have access to the papers of Moynier and another early Red Cross figure, Louis Appia). Only Henry Dunant, with his naturally dramatic life of high-mindedness, inspired rhetoric, financial scandal, and social rehabilitation (he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901), emerges as a captivating character. Florence Nightingale, who appears to have rejected the Red Cross on grounds that it ``would render war more easy,'' is more a thematic marker than a historical personage. An even more vexing problem is the wordy prose, with interminable sentences punctuated by parenthetical statements, as well as multiple dates and acronyms. This study sustains its theme and convinces readers of its view of this ``sacred cow,'' but prolixity and lack of narrative drive make it slow going. (97 photos, not seen)
Pub Date: April 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-8133-2526-9
Page Count: 544
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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