A winning combination of travelogue and religious biography.
Guided by several medieval biographies whose timelines often do not jibe, former Newsweek editor Francke (Ground Zero, 1997, etc.) amiably follows the trail of Saint Francis, who for most of his adult life was a wandering preacher in the small hill towns of Italy.
Francke begins her journey in Assisi, where Francis was born in 1181, and travels to the places where significant events in his spiritual life occurred. As she and her photographer husband move about through towns and mountaintop hermitages, she tells the story of Francis’s life, from spoiled youth to failed knight and prisoner of war to his conversion from playboy to penitent sworn to vows of obedience, poverty and chastity. Throughout, she recounts the details of numerous miracles ascribed to Francis, not as factual events but as illustrations of life in the Middle Ages, plagued by famine, floods, leprosy and more. She is well aware of the industry surrounding some of the religious sites she visits, and she expresses skepticism about some of the relics that she sees of both Francis and Clare, his most famous convert. Though her take on the stigmata he supposedly bore may offend true believers, this is both a respectful narrative of the life of a man she clearly admires and a gracious account of being a tourist in Italy. One of the book’s highlights is her treatment of Francis’s attempt to convert the sultan of Egypt in 1219 and thus end the Fifth Crusade. He did not succeed, of course, but Francke has a choice story about how he won the sultan’s respect. Also gripping but quite gruesome is her description of the medical procedures inflicted on Francis in the weeks before his death in Assisi in 1226. For anyone wishing to duplicate any or all of her journey, Francke ends with a paragraph of travel notes, suggesting maps, guidebooks, accommodations and car rental options.
A winning combination of travelogue and religious biography.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2005
ISBN: 1-4000-6239-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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