A bare-bones summary that is even shorter and somewhat less eloquent than Louis Auchincloss’ Roosevelt bio (2002) in the...
A very brief resource on the life of Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919).
Gould (American History Emeritus/Univ. of Texas; The Most Exclusive Club: A History of the Modern United States Senate, 2005, etc.) extracts significantly from his previous pertinent works on Roosevelt, Taft and the Progressive era. The character depicted here is one of decisive action, charisma and accidental fame (his accelerating celebrity status served his causes as naturalist and reformer). Underestimated early in his career by the Republican Party he tirelessly stumped for, he eventually secured GOP appointments in Benjamin Harrison’s Civil Service Commission, then as President McKinley’s assistant secretary of the Navy in 1897. Contrary to later mythmaking, Roosevelt “did not bring on the war” with Spain over the Philippines, but he embraced the hostilities enthusiastically. His Rough Riders’ valiant efforts to take the San Juan Heights in Cuba gained him enormous acclaim at home, paving the way for two years as New York governor and making him the attractive vice-presidential choice for McKinley. Using the “bully pulpit” of the now-renamed White House, his Square Deal instituted sweeping reforms such as breaking up monopolies, mediating with striking miners, acquiring the Panama Canal Zone, ensuring government regulation in the Pure Food and Drug Act, including women in the democratic process and conserving the natural world from degradation. His years after the White House were largely spent planning how to get back in, and his Progressive Party platform of 1912 laid out an agenda “that was far more reformist than that of any Democratic or Republican presidential nominees until the New Deal.”
A bare-bones summary that is even shorter and somewhat less eloquent than Louis Auchincloss’ Roosevelt bio (2002) in the Times/Holt presidential series.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-19-979701-1
Page Count: 104
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2011
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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