Indian State historian Williams (A Great and Shining Road, 1988) presents one of the most colorful figures of the early days of the American West as a flawed hero and failed family man—but also as an unswerving supporter of the republic that he guided into the US. Born in 1793 in western Virginia, Houston distanced himself from his family at an early age, living among the Cherokee as a teenager and maintaining their trust even after he developed his lifelong passion for alcohol. Wounded in an attack against Creek rebels, he recovered sufficiently to become a member of Congress and then governor of Tennessee before the age of 35, but habitual drunkenness and a scandal involving his wife led to his resignation as governor in 1829. Soon attracted to the possibility of carving a new nation from northern Mexico, Houston became involved in schemes to settle the territory with Americans, provoking a strong response from Mexican general Santa Anna. Seizing the proper moment, now-General Houston led a charge against the Mexican army, defeating it soundly though receiving a painful wound. Acclaimed as a hero, Houston became the first president of the Republic of Texas and steered it on a quiet but steady course toward annexation by the US (accomplished in 1845) while attempting to stay clear of the growing controversy over slavery. As a US senator and, later, governor of Texas, Houston held to a moderate course, trying above all to keep Texas in the Union—but to no avail. In 1863, two years after Texas joined the Confederacy, Houston died, broken and impoverished. Well-detailed but somewhat pedestrian history in which Houston emerges only intermittently from his context; still, a valuable look at the forces behind the formation of Texas and its pivotal role in US expansion from coast to coast. (B&w photos—not seen.)
Pub Date: Jan. 25, 1993
ISBN: 0-671-74641-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1992
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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