Indifferently written and burdened by invented dialogue, but notable for illustrating that the meeting of civilizations need...
Biography of a moderate Arab leader in an age of intransigence and empire building.
Freelance biographer and business writer Kiser (The Monks of Tibhirine: Faith, Love, and Terror in Algeria, 2002, etc.) finds a meaty subject in early-19th-century Algeria, when French soldiers invaded the country, ostensibly to deliver it from Ottoman oppressors, only to find that the Algerians rather liked the Ottomans, “whose laissez-faire habits had left the tribes in relative freedom so long as they paid their taxes.” They did not like the liberty, equality, fraternity-spreading French, whom they ambushed in mountain passes and attacked in the city streets. The intellectual author of resistance was a jihadist emir named Abd el-Kader, a marabout (“a holy man or member of a religious brotherhood”) who kept much of the French army pinned down for several years until finally being captured. El-Kader played a gentleman’s game of war, accompanied by religious pronouncements meant for anyone with ears, along the ecumenical lines of, “No one is an infidel in all the ways relating to God.” The French emperor greeted El-Kader as a worthy foe, and arrangements were made to settle him in a grand castle within sight of the Pyrenees, even if some of the locals protested that he was a “monster of the desert.” Still, a prison is a prison, and El-Kader’s many friends in France eventually agitated to have him removed to Ottoman territory, where he became a respected governor and saved thousands of Christians from being killed in religious violence in Syria. As Kiser notes, he was so widely respected that the New York Times editorialized on his death that he was “one of the few great men of the century.”
Indifferently written and burdened by invented dialogue, but notable for illustrating that the meeting of civilizations need not always produce a clash.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-9798828-3-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Monkfish
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
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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