Uneven, but fitfully fascinating.
Magazine journalist Van Meter spins a rambling tale around the “ultimate connected guy.”
The author began his career writing for Atlantic City magazine in 1985, and his fascination with the life and times of Paul “Skinny” D’Amato dates from that point. Born in 1908, one-time convicted gambler D’Amato blossomed along with the city of his birth. Van Meter documents that fruitful era under Atlantic County Sheriff Enoch “Nucky” Johnson, who became a political superboss by recognizing that all it would take to make a bland stretch of New Jersey beach into a vibrant, all-things-to-all-comers resort was for the cops to know exactly when to look the other way. While the law did exactly that for the three decades of Johnson’s reign and beyond, Skinny grew up and became the owner-founder of the 500 Club and, concurrently, the quintessential go-between in the creation of Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack as well its dealings with peripheral figures like Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe, the mobster Sam Giancana, his girlfriend (Judith Exner), and her boyfriend (John F. Kennedy). The club boomed with its times: dropping in during the 1950s, you’d find Martin and Lewis testing their onstage chemistry, while those hanging out by the bar included, say, Elizabeth Taylor, Milton Berle, Liberace, and Grace Kelly. The author unravels colorful yarns (some familiar) gleaned from interviews with Skinny’s family, friends, and former employees, but things lag somewhat during a detailed analysis of the transition in business-as-usual wrought by the crime-busting Kefauver Commission. As the ’60s unfold, Skinny yields to what seems in retrospect a biblical temptation by leaving AC to run Sinatra’s Cal-Neva Lodge at Lake Tahoe. It’s the beginning of the end as Marilyn overdoses, JFK travels to Dallas, and Atlantic City lapses into tenements and white-elephant hotels to await a new Casino Era.
Uneven, but fitfully fascinating.Pub Date: June 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-609-60877-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 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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