In his 90th year, Galbraith has produced his 31st book: a slight but enjoyable remembrance of the great, and not-so-great, he has encountered in his adventures in politics. Galbraith first came to Washington, D.C., in 1934 to serve under FDR and the New Deal. He takes us from that time, when his own liberalism and the country’s were being forged, to the end of the 1960s, when the liberal consensus, but not his own belief, had begun to fade. While betraying a certain nostalgia for that era, when much seemed possible and indeed much was accomplished, this is not a political tome. He focuses instead on the people he met and admired along the way. First and foremost in his memory is FDR, “the greatest political personality of the century.” Some he speaks of remain well known (Truman, JFK). Others have perhaps faded somewhat from memory (Adlai Stevenson, Averell Harriman). Only one true villain makes an appearance, Albert Speer, whose semi-rehabilitation still troubles Galbraith, and only two women are profiled, Eleanor Roosevelt and Jacqueline Kennedy. Galbraith brings them all to life, Speer excepted, by focusing on their humanity, foibles, and above all humor. Galbraith is a witty man and enjoys others who are so inclined, often at his own expense. “Ken,” wrote Stevenson during his 1956 presidential campaign, “I want you to write the speeches against Nixon. You have no tendency to be fair.” LBJ commented on a speech on economics Galbraith wrote: “Making a speech on ee-conomics is a lot like pissin’ down your leg. It seems hot to you, but it never does to anyone else.” Speaking to antiwar protesters outside the 1968 Democratic Convention Galbraith says, “I don’t want you fighting with these National Guardsmen Remember, they’re draft dodgers just like you.” ‘ And so it goes. There’s some criticism here, there could be more. There’s little to no mention of politicians after LBJ. But perhaps these will be part of Galbraith’ s 32nd book.
Pub Date: May 27, 1999
ISBN: 0-395-82288-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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