A handsome addition to the author’s tapestry of his Massachusetts purlieus, by now as closely observed as Gilbert White’s...
Another artful piece of creative nonfiction from Mitchell (Following the Sun, 2002, etc.) rediscovers the life of a multitalented African-American assistant.
While researching a book on the New England landscape, the author uncovered in the attic of an old farmhouse a trove of glass negatives from the early 1900s. At first he thought ornithologist and conservationist William Brewster had taken them, but Mitchell came to understand that many of the photos were produced by Robert Alexander Gilbert, who worked with Brewster for many years. In prose as smoothly cadenced as the Concord River so frequently depicted in those images, Mitchell takes readers along on his odyssey to learn more about the man who was Brewster’s inseparable amanuensis. A man of sure bearing and an ardent piano player, Gilbert was inspired by the writings of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois, but perhaps more closely followed the Emersonian ideal of the upright individual. His lonely courage saw him through all the adversities black people experienced at the turn of the 20th century. Polymath Gilbert is just the kind of character suited to Mitchell’s temperament, allowing him to ramble afield and digress into ruminations on such matters as the nature of photography, whose invention made it possible “to use existing light to halt the linear flow of time and pluck a discontinuity from an otherwise continuous flow of events.” The author also traces the origins of American ornithological concerns (in which both Brewster and Gilbert figured, the latter as a shadow player), looks into the history of Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology (where Gilbert worked) and travels to Paris, where Gilbert landed after a failed attempt to market his shoe polish. In other words, this particular life story keeps Mitchell’s restless curiosity well exercised.
A handsome addition to the author’s tapestry of his Massachusetts purlieus, by now as closely observed as Gilbert White’s Selborne. (Photos throughout)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2005
ISBN: 1-59376-026-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Shoemaker & Hoard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2004
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
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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