For true believers only—and even they are going to have a hard time lasting through this dull book, which actually...
A droning, 400-page toast to George H.W. Bush.
In his first book, Sununu, the former New Hampshire governor and longtime chief of staff known as “Bush’s Bad Cop,” tries to set the record straight on his old boss, relying mainly on willful blindness to his faults, a flattering reinterpretation of his failures, and a gross exaggeration of his accomplishments. Readers inclined to the view that Bush was underrated, or at the very least a decent, ethical, and kind man (no argument there), might be put off by Sununu’s starry-eyed perception of Bush as a leader whose life is a testament to his selfless love of country and whose grasp of domestic and international politics was so sure and subtle that no one saw how brilliant it was. The president’s slowness to act on getting rid of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega was just an example of a master gunslinger biding his time for the right moment. In the author’s view, Bush’s actions in Desert Storm were sure and unwavering; the Margaret Thatcher who said, “Don't go wobbly on us, George,” is nowhere to be found. The Bush who blundered so badly by saying, “Read my lips—no new taxes” isn’t the one that’s important; it’s the Bush who saw the error of his ways and nobly raised taxes anyway. All of this might be regarded as pardonable bias if the book were at least an interesting portrait. Although Sununu does have his share of anecdotes and some glimpses of life inside the White House, the book is primarily written in press release prose, thickly woven with cut-and-paste positions, platform planks, and robotic quotes from the commander in chief.
For true believers only—and even they are going to have a hard time lasting through this dull book, which actually encourages more skepticism than it erases.Pub Date: June 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-238428-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Broadside Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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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