How one very rich son-of-a-bitch built an empire and destroyed his own family, from Pearson, who chronicled the neuroses of the Churchills in The Private Lives of Winston Churchill (1991, etc.). Second-generation millionaire oilman Jean Paul Getty (18921976) was disinherited by his puritan father because of the younger Getty's profligate lifestyle: As the result of what he called ``matrimonial fever,'' J. Paul married five times (once bigamously), sired five children (of record), and had many, many mistresses. He also succumbed to the charms of Europe and European nobility, neither of which appealed to his provincial pa. Not put off by the disapproving last will and testament, J. Paul eventually got his hands on the old man's money (through his doting mother, Sarah, the principal beneficiary) and parlayed that modest fortune into what Pearson terms an ``outrageous'' one—over a billion dollars in personal assets. All of which might have been a mere twist on the American dream if it weren't for the utter mess J. Paul made of his personal life—or, rather, the lives of everyone closest to him. Getty had almost nothing to do with his sons until they were old enough to take part in the family business. But even then, J. Paul played favorites and pitted brother against brother until the eldest, George, committed suicide, and his half-brother, Paul Junior, became a drug addict. But the cruelest lot fell to one of the next generation: Jean Paul III, who was kidnapped for five months in Italy, lost an ear while his grandfather refused to pay the $17 million ransom, became an alcoholic, eventually fell into a coma, and emerged almost blind and quadriplegic. Pop-journalistic, unbalanced in favor of those who seem to have cooperated with the author (who offers no source notes), notably Paul Junior's ex-wife, Gail, and an absorbing read. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen) (First serial to Marie Claire)
Pub Date: Nov. 27, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-13579-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1995
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
PERSPECTIVES
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