Not likely to be the “definitive biography” of U2, but Jobling provides a passable comprehensive history of the members’...
Unauthorized biography of U2, one of the most respected and admired yet divisive acts in the history of rock.
Sometimes, the divisiveness stems from the same roots as the respect; some people find the band’s frank embrace of politics empowering and noble while others find it preachy and sanctimonious. Where some see spectacle, others see bombast. British journalist Jobling explores the lives and careers of the band members: lead singer and most visible member Bono, lead guitarist The Edge, bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. The four met as schoolboys and made a slow, steady climb through Dublin’s music scene, eventually rising first to regional prominence and eventually to global dominance. Along the way, three of the members, all except Clayton, took part in a Charismatic Christian church that engaged in the speaking of tongues. At times, each of them partook in the excesses of the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle and, to varying degrees, embraced a political mission that would come to define them, especially frontman Bono, nearly as much as their music. The band has a reputation for keeping tight control of their image, which might explain the unauthorized nature of the book. While this frees Jobling to be critical of a variety of subjects concerning the band—e.g., its absurdly high ticket prices and corporate ties—it also proves restrictive since the band doesn’t get the opportunity to respond to some of the more prurient charges that the author, via his interview subjects, levels against them. Indeed, at times, those subjects seem to relish the chance to grind axes, especially in the second half of the book.
Not likely to be the “definitive biography” of U2, but Jobling provides a passable comprehensive history of the members’ music, politics, faith and group dynamics.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-250-02789-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014
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
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
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