In-your-face violence and resilient heroism that leaps off the page.
The life and work of a tireless Compton, Calif. beat cop.
Baker spent his early years living in the Los Angeles suburb of Boyle Heights, a place filled with a variety of ethnicities who had migrated there, primarily Latinos and African-Americans. This integration came in handy when the family relocated to affordable Compton in 1950 and he was sent to Catholic school in nearby Watts. As a white boy, he stood out in the predominately black-populated school, but held his own excelling as a natural athlete. Black gang activity soon dominated the western side of the city, while the white citizens organized themselves in the East. By the time Baker joined the Marines, the Watts riots had broken out and Compton became a war zone, spurring the author to join the Compton Police Department in 1968. Capably tracing his distinguished 18-year career policing “America’s most dangerous city,” the author briskly narrates a cavalcade of harrowing stories as he graduated from a cautious rookie to a respected if battered officer to a seasoned sergeant. Par for the course was the violently bloody, racial gang warfare (Baker offers an expansive historical perspective), rescuing rape victims, drug trafficking and their resultant homicides, rampant gunfighting and the backlash of smug, fearless criminals who threatened law enforcement’s grip over their dominion. Additionally, Baker received a crash course on the inside politics, corruption and nepotism of the police brigade. Academy Award–nominated screenwriter (Nixon, Ali), Rivele (co-author: Lieutenant Ramsey’s War: From Horse Soldier to Guerrilla Commander, 2005, etc.) ably compiled boxes of recordings that Baker created after initially dismissing the offer to tell his life story. The result is an exhaustive, thrilling, ultraviolent story about the endless struggle that the Compton PD (who disbanded in 2000) faced in attempting to prevent the city from “dissolving into chaos.”
In-your-face violence and resilient heroism that leaps off the page.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-312-59687-3
Page Count: 416
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2010
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
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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