A concise, lucid tour of the writings and wide-ranging ideas of the American regarded in many quarters as “the founder of the modern conservative movement.” Person (Senior Editor, Gale Research) argues, however, that Russell Kirk (1918-94) should be viewed not as an ideologue but as a man of letters. It’s true that his 1953 study The Conservative Mind identified a line of conservative thought stretching back to 18th-century England, isolated certain social and political theories that could be termed “conservative,” and asserted the continuing relevance of a coherent body of thought opposed to large government and insisting on the moral primacy (and responsibilities) of the individual. But Kirk, Person points out, steered clear of any deep involvement in Republican politics. He was, first and foremost, a writer, producing during a lengthy career “32 books, 800 essays, book reviews, and articles, and more than 3,000 newspaper and magazine columns.” His books, some of them pugnacious in their historical assertions and contemporary criticisms, included biographies (Edmund Burke), histories (The Roots of American Order), literary and social criticism (Enemies of the Permanent Things, Eliot and His Age), political theory (A Program for Conservatives), and critiques of contemporary education (Decadence and Renewal in the Higher Learning). Person devotes chapters to each of these areas, explicating Kirk’s theories in these fields while stressing the extent to which each was part of an ambitious attempt to apply conservative principles to most elements of social life. A brief but admiring sketch of Kirk’s life stresses the extent to which he practiced the humane conservatism he preached. The subtitle is somewhat confusing: This is not so much a biography of a conservative’s thoughts as a thoughtful analysis of the arguments advanced in each of Kirk’s major books. Given Kirk’s influence on the concepts that many contemporary conservatives claim to embrace, his work will surely continue to be both influential and controversial. Person offers an excellent guide to his legacy. (15 b&w photos)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-56833-131-2
Page Count: 235
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1999
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
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