Good storytelling matched with appropriate historical skepticism—a useful model for examining other 10-gallon yarns of...
An inadvertent American archetype comes in for thoughtful consideration in the hands of Coleman (History/Notre Dame Univ.; Vicious: Wolves and Men in America, 2004).
Hugh Glass had no idea he’d be a figure in the history books. A sort of entry-level mountain man in the early days of American exploration in the West, he “approached grizzly bears and bosses with the same disreputable grin.” One of those grizzly bears mutilated him so badly that it was highly unlikely he would survive. Andrew Henry, his boss on a trapping expedition along the Missouri River, left two men to bury Glass. The two men fled when a party of Indians approached, but Glass didn’t die. Instead, he crawled and hobbled for 38 days eastward to the nearest American outpost, swearing to avenge himself on the men who had abandoned him. Richard Harris did a fine job as a wronged man based on Glass in the 1971 film Man in the Wilderness, which figures at turns in Coleman’s vigorous narrative. But Glass, writes the author, turns up in countless other places in the larger story of the American West, an illustration of his staying power as a symbol of an ordinary guy who “merely endured.” It’s not exactly news that the history of the West is peppered with myth and legend spun out precisely to convince other ordinary guys to enter into the dangerous business of taming the frontier. Coleman doesn’t pretend otherwise, instead picking apart the tale of Glass to determine what can be called factual with any confidence. The answer is—well, perhaps not much, though, as Coleman wisely notes, “[t]he truth of these stories matters less than their coincidences.”
Good storytelling matched with appropriate historical skepticism—a useful model for examining other 10-gallon yarns of westward expansion.Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8090-5459-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: March 25, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
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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