All in all, earnestly winning, old-fashioned storytelling.
A slapdash, repetitious but nonetheless compelling look at two phenoms of the late-19th-century, by Mr. Wild West himself.
McMurtry (Loop Group, 2004, etc.) knows his territory, and though he takes some time here working up a thesis separating Buffalo Bill Cody’s and Annie Oakley’s legends from the facts, the author of the Pulitzer-winning Lonesome Dove is ever fascinating and knowledgeable. He does not purport to give a biography of Cody, who grew up in “bleeding” Kansas and worked briefly as a Pony Express guide, Army scout and buffalo hunter before embarking on a 30-year show-biz career that ended with his death in 1917. But the facts of Cody’s romantic story keep pulling him in, especially the “tropes,” as McMurtry calls the legendary set pieces by which Cody defined himself. These included his first killing of an Indian when he was 11 and his scalping of Yellow Hair in 1876. Cody’s scouting for the Army allows McMurtry free reign on the subtleties of the Indian Wars, a subject he evidently relishes. Having distinguished the facts of Cody’s glamorous life (fodder for something like 1,700 dime novels), McMurtry moves into his work as a showman. By 1882, Cody had organized some of the first rodeos and hired Indians to help stage such dramatic mock-historical scenes as the attack on the Deadwood stage and battles between settlers and Indians. One of his most successful acts was sharpshooter Annie Oakley, a poor girl from Ohio who made an honorable living by her gun and was the first woman to be admitted to British shooting clubs. McMurtry explores Oakley’s own “creation myth,” involving the shooting of a squirrel on a fence with her father’s too-big rifle when she was a girl: “She always claimed that it was one of the better shots she ever made.” No spectacular or sexy revelations here, just a curious excursus into Cody’s successful performance for “Grandmother England” during the troupe’s 1887 tour for Victoria’s Jubilee.
All in all, earnestly winning, old-fashioned storytelling.Pub Date: June 7, 2005
ISBN: 0-7432-7171-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
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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