A welcome study that sheds new light on recent Chinese history.
A well-done life of the legendary but now little-studied Chinese leader.
Fenby (France on the Brink, 1999), a former editor at the South China Post, writes of Chiang Kai-shek with admiration and revulsion at turns—reactions that were common in Chiang’s day, at home and abroad. An indifferent cadet who, in the words of one military instructor, “did not reveal innate ability,” Chiang slowly gathered power on the fringes of Sun Yat-sen’s Kuomintang movement, which overthrew the last ruler of the Ming dynasty; by outmaneuvering his rivals, he was able to consolidate his hold even while the movement veered from left to right, at points allying with China’s Communist Party, at others suppressing any signs of opposition. Fenby opens his account with the so-called Xi’an Incident, when, in 1936, junior officers arrested Chiang and demanded that he make common cause with the Communists against Japan; a united front, Fenby reasons, “would water down Chiang’s authority” while ending a bloody civil war. Alas, it was not to be, and though FDR once held out the hope that a China led by Chiang would be “a pillar of the new world order,” Chiang lost whatever store of good will he had among the people and was eventually driven offshore to rule as “generalissimo” of Taiwan for a quarter-century. Fenby brings some intriguing news to his account: Chiang’s offer, for one, to invade the Chinese mainland in the wake of Mao Zedong’s disastrous, brutal Great Leap Forward campaign; the machinations of American advisor Joseph Stilwell and other China hands to keep Chiang from gaining control over the anti-Japanese coalition, and Chiang’s crafty resistance. Had the Xi’an Incident not taken place, Chiang might well have crushed the Communists; but, Fenby concludes, “rather than the inescapability of Communist victory, it was the weakness of the Nationalists, Chiang’s failure as a military leader, and economic disintegration that sent the one-time man of destiny fleeing to Taiwan.”
A welcome study that sheds new light on recent Chinese history.Pub Date: March 16, 2004
ISBN: 0-7867-1318-6
Page Count: 592
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2003
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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