Hawking is both a scientific superstar and a man widely admired for overcoming—indeed, all but ignoring—the degenerative muscular disease ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), which has robbed him of almost all movement but left his mind intact. Hawking is hot on the trail of the ``Theory of Everything,'' the basic understanding of how the universe came into being and what makes it tick. His brilliant theories encompass the big bang (if there was one); black holes (which may not be black); and the astonishing question of why, among the infinite possibilities, the universe chooses to exist in the unlikely way that it does. God, time, and our place in the cosmos all seem as important to him as the complex equations governing the fundamental particles. This splendid, carefully researched study of the man and his ideas—based on interviews with Hawking, a good knowledge of his subject, and many secondary sources—balances the fascination of physics (extremely well described) with the fascination of the man. By his work, Hawking has earned a comfortable home to share with his wife of 26 years and his children. Still, he and Jane Hawking are separated; she says he wants to do "Areabsolutely everything that comes to his notice,'' leaving little time for the family. Ego? Overcompensation? Or the sense of being so close to understanding that there's room for little else? Does the personal drama have anything to do with the universe? With this man and this universe, probably. B&w photos; graphs and diagrams; full source notes; bibliography; glossary; index. (Nonfiction. 13+)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-531-11067-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1991
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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