A spirited collection of stories interspersed with the athlete-author's often clichÇd comments and observations. Former NBA basketball star Abdul-Jabbar (Kareem, 1990) contends that the accomplishments of African-Americans have—for the most part—deliberately been written out of the history books. Penned in a conversational tone, this book is meant to ``inform, encourage and inspire'' those ``young Americans who most need a heritage to embrace.'' Among those profiled here are some relatively obscure African-Americans, including Peter Salem, a slave who helped repel two British assaults at Bunker Hill, and Lewis H. Latimer, Thomas Edison's chief patent expert, who helped Edison usher in the age of electricity. Well-known African- Americans, such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Rosa Parks, are also covered. In addition to celebrating the achievements of blacks, the author is out to demythologize the accomplishments of supportive whites. Abraham Lincoln, for example, is referred to as ``the Late Emancipator,'' who ``deliberately delayed while black people died.'' Abdul-Jabbar surmises that historians have constantly denied credit to those blacks who were at the forefront of our nation's major historical events because ``it was too much of a contradiction to enlist blacks in the fight for freedom and then deny them those rights on the basis of their skin color.'' While many of Abdul-Jabbar's contentions are certainly valid, there is one major flaw to his thesis. Whereas his generation's textbooks did omit the contributions of blacks, this is not the case in the multicultural '90s. Many of the nation's current textbooks celebrate the contributions of minorities (especially Native Americans and African-Americans), often at the expense of dead white males. Even a decade after JFK's title, Black Profiles in Courage would have been a slam dunk. In 1996, though, it seems curiously behind the times. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-688-13097-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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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