A rip-roaring adventure yarn lies at the heart of this recently discovered autobiography. Fortunately, editor Sprague, of Morehead State University, mostly lets Parker speak for himself, which the former slave does eloquently. So eloquently, in fact, that the reader wonders at Sprague's assertion that this account ``has the slight rough edge associated with oral history.'' The rough edges seem nearly all smoothed over—probably by Frank Moody Gregg, the white reporter to whom Parker dictated his wonderful tale. Parker (18271900) was a slave whose owners taught him to read and gave him a useful trade. Iron molding was so lucrative, ultimately, that Parker used his wages from it to buy his freedom. He started up a business of his own, married, and had several children, three of whom went on to graduate college. As fascinating as his revealed life was, however, the true excitement of this account comes from Parker's secret activities in the Underground Railroad in Ripley, Ohio, a hotbed of abolitionism when Parker moved there in 1849. Parker tells of traps and daring rescues, near escapes and noble sacrifices. One man gave up his own freedom so that a husband and wife could escape together. Another woman, the ``Eliza'' of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, crossed the Ohio River with her baby as the ice cracked under her and dogs barked at her heels. Although Parker was not directly involved in Eliza's escape, it is because of her that this autobiography exists at all: It was while researching Harriet Beecher Stowe's tale that Frank Moody Gregg stumbled onto the amazing Parker. The rest is history of the best kind—both highly entertaining and informative. (photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-393-03941-2
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1996
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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