Writing of his life and his scientific challenges, the author of The Lives of a Cell and The Medusa and the Snail displays the same unpretentious but erudite way with words that have made the essays justly famous. Thomas grew up in N.Y.'s Flushing when there were clapboard houses and trees; Father was a horse-and-buggy doctor who made house calls; Mother was a nurse; and the front parlor was the waiting room. He went on to Harvard Medical School and internship in Boston, residency at Columbia (in neurology), a tour at Rockefeller Institute, military service on Guam, and then postwar academic laurels—departmental chairmanships at Minnesota and NYU, a deanship at Yale. Thomas is now head of Sloan-Kettering. But all this is incidental to telling what student life was like in the pre-antibiotic days; what personal fascinations there are in infectious diseases, in strange microorganisms (neither bacteria nor virus) called mycoplasmas. Thomas' administrative skills were quickly recognized, and he describes jumping at the chance to build up a pathology department at NYU; he also remarks that he would prefer, to this day, being taken to Bellevue over any other place should he fall ill on the streets of New York. From his stints on the N.Y.C. Board of Health and on Johnson's science advisory board, there are political asides as well. The chronology moves to the present with word of personal illness and surgery, and the observation that every doctor should have the experience of being a patient. Wife Beryl, clearly an intellectual soul-mate, is mentioned sparingly and lovingly. As commentary on being a doctor, on doing and teaching science, an adornment to the Sloan Foundation series (which began with Freeman Dyson's Disturbing the Universe and Peter Medawar's Advice to a Young Scientist); and, in itself, a sheer pleasure to read.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1982
ISBN: 0140243275
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1982
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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