A pastiche of reminiscences and newspaper clippings that tries to set the record straight and certainly suggests that, as...
The real Margaret (she was never called Molly) Brown revealed in a biography long on both dramatic reconstructions of the Titanic disaster and mundane family scrapbooks.
As Iversen, an editor at Westcliffe Publishers, has it, Margaret (she was sometimes called Maggie) Brown was never the high-kicking vulgarian with a heart of gold portrayed by Debbie Reynolds in The Unsinkable Molly Brown or even the flamboyant dowager queen of the West (with a heart of gold) portrayed by Kathy Bates in the film Titanic. She was educated, culturally aware, multilingual, and comfortable in Paris, Newport, New York, Denver, and Leadville, Colo., society. She did have a heart of gold, and it was often dedicated to such sophisticated activities as organizing successful fund-raising events for building Denver’s Roman Catholic cathedral, adding a wing to a Denver hospital, aiding families of miners left destitute by disaster, and, with her friend “Kids Judge” Benjamin Lindsey, organizing and subsidizing programs for indigent children. Her courage and organizational abilities were evident in the Titanic disaster, when she not only helped row Lifeboat #6 to safety but also went on to raise money and social support for the surviving immigrants, who had lost everything when the ship went down. Margaret was also a feminist, putting herself forth as a candidate for Congress. Her marriage to miner J.J. Brown had collapsed by then, due probably to both his womanizing and her activism. Margaret and her two children vied in court over J.J.’s will but eventually reconciled. Before she died in 1932 at age 65, Margaret was awarded the French Legion of Honor for her work in France during WWI.
A pastiche of reminiscences and newspaper clippings that tries to set the record straight and certainly suggests that, as important as the myth of the golden-hearted Western girl may be, the real Margaret was far more interesting than the cinematic versions. (b&w photos, not seen)Pub Date: July 5, 1999
ISBN: 1-55566-236-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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