Gracious, often touchingly ingenuous, at once panoramic and particular, Graham's autobiography absorbingly reconstructs her life of worldly privilege and affective deprivation as the daughter of one formidable man and the wife and widow of another, then chronicles her own rise to the challenges of captaining the Washington Post. Katharine Meyer—her blue blood diluted only slightly by her father's Jewish roots, her development stunted severely by a self- aggrandizing mother—survived the conventions and emotional isolation of a richly endowed girlhood to marry the irreverent Phil Graham, whom she celebrates for liberating her from her unspontaneous self and the weight of her family mythology. It was he who ``put the fix in our lives'' . . . and, shatteringly, put a gun to his head after escalating manic-depression climaxed in his running off with the latest of his unsuspected paramours, leaving Katharine to abject devastation. That she was utterly bereft of social confidence by middle age seems to have been both cause and effect of Phil's defection; nonetheless, she determined to go to work to preserve for her children the Post, which Phil had taken over from her father. (With characteristic modesty and felicity, she extols the ``originality'' of the friend who planted the idea that she could run it.) But also, she quite fell in love with the paper and the burgeoning corporate enterprise. It was an excruciating coming-of-age, because of her constant self-doubt and frankly poor management and because of the magnitude of the events played out on her watch—each revisited in reflective, defensive, parochial detail: the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, the pressmen's strike, the company's going public, major acquisition and personnel decisions. Graham's book, like her life, is harnessed to history, political and journalistic (even her best friends were famous). Her myriad stories—discreet to a fault—humanize a whole pantheon of Personalities. Her personal drama, however, upstages the rest. (24 pages photos, not seen) (First printing of 200,000; author tour)
Pub Date: Feb. 11, 1997
ISBN: 0-394-58585-2
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1997
SEEN & HEARD
A quirky wonder of a book.
A Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.
Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point[ed]…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category—fish—does not exist. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence.
A quirky wonder of a book.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6027-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
While the author may attempt to mirror this ideal, the result is less than satisfying and more than a little irritating.
A disjointed debut memoir about how competitive swimming shaped the personal and artistic sensibilities of a respected illustrator.
Through a series of vignettes, paintings and photographs that often have no sequential relationship to each other, Shapton (The Native Trees of Canada, 2010, etc.) depicts her intense relationship to all aspects of swimming: pools, water, races and even bathing suits. The author trained competitively throughout her adolescence, yet however much she loved racing, “the idea of fastest, of number one, of the Olympics, didn’t motivate me.” In 1988 and again in 1992, she qualified for the Olympic trials but never went further. Soon afterward, Shapton gave up competition, but she never quite ended her relationship to swimming. Almost 20 years later, she writes, “I dream about swimming at least three nights a week.” Her recollections are equally saturated with stories that somehow involve the act of swimming. When she speaks of her family, it is less in terms of who they are as individuals and more in context of how they were involved in her life as a competitive swimmer. When she describes her adult life—which she often reveals in disconnected fragments—it is in ways that sometimes seem totally random. If she remembers the day before her wedding, for example, it is because she couldn't find a bathing suit to wear in her hotel pool. Her watery obsession also defines her view of her chosen profession, art. At one point, Shapton recalls a documentary about Olympian Michael Phelps and draws the parallel that art, like great athleticism, is as “serene in aspect” as it is “incomprehensible.”
While the author may attempt to mirror this ideal, the result is less than satisfying and more than a little irritating.Pub Date: July 5, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-399-15817-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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