Ross sweeps readers along in Rickenbacker’s thrilling tale.
Energetic look at the World War I ace’s early exploits through the prism of exciting modern changes in America.
In his passionately sympathetic biography, Ross (War on the Run: The Epic Story of Robert Rogers and the Conquest of America’s First Frontier, 2009, etc.) finds in Eddie Rickenbacker (1890-1973) a subject as brash, unassuming and heroic as the young American nation at the turn of the 20th century. The author admires the fact that the son of poor, German-speaking Swiss immigrants had so much going against him in the early years and overcame the obstacles through sheer hard work and determination. Luck, another quintessential American ingredient, favored him, as well as the ability to fudge the record when necessary, such as he did about the events surrounding the death of his belligerent father in 1904 after picking a fight with another laborer. At 13, Rickenbacker quit school and went to work, becoming head of the household and breadwinner. A natural leader, Rickenbacker adored mechanical tinkering and invention and parlayed his work in a machine shop into becoming “mechanician” at the Oscar Lear Automobile Company, racing state-of-the-art Frayer-Millers. “Engines have always talked to me,” he asserted, demonstrating his nearly “mystical” ways with them as he began proving himself a winner in races throughout the country. With the United States propelled into the European war in 1917, Rickenbacker talked his way past bigotry against German-Americans, his lack of a gentlemanly education and an eye injury and began flying lessons at Tours Aerodrome, essentially teaching himself in the fragile, unreliable Nieuports that the Germans outclassed in their mightier Albatroses. Aerial dogfights provided plenty of sobering danger and led to the deaths of many of his closest colleagues. In a few short months, Rickenbacker, with 26 kills, was a national hero.
Ross sweeps readers along in Rickenbacker’s thrilling tale.Pub Date: May 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-250-03377-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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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