Both more and less than you wanted to know about the scandalous downfall of the chief judge of New York State's Court of Appeals. How did the highly respected Sol Wachtler wind up convicted in 1993 of plotting a vulgar extortion scheme against his former mistress, Republican Party fundraiser Joy Silverman? Wolfe (Wasted, 1989) strings together a lot of sordid and unanalyzed facts, failing to satisfactorily answer this troubling question. In a cool, simplistic narrative, she sketches the life of Silverman- -abandoned by her natural father, both despised and sexually molested by her stepfather, a jewel-obsessed siren who used and discarded men on her climb up the social ladder; and of Wachtler- -charismatic and ambitious wonder boy of the New York State Republican Party, an emotionally vacuous man who, after his first electoral failure, ``learned...how to wear a mask.'' Restless on the bench, desperate for attention, and apparently sexually naive, he was ripe for picking by his wife's stepcousin Silverman, and devastated when the affair ended. Silverman (who, unlike Wachtler, declined to be interviewed for this book) emerges as a caricature of a caricature—the nightmare JAP from hell. (On moving to St. Petersburg, Fla., with her first husband, she reportedly asked, ``Where can you shop here?'') In portraying Wachtler and Silverman and others in their circle, Wolfe settles for facile prose (``earrings...shone on her ears like beacons'') and characterizations (``She refused to let his confession crush her...she'd always had a strong ego''). And she doesn't shed light on how Wachtler was able to function effectively as a judge while suffering from what his psychiatrist said was a drug-induced mania (from Tenuate, Pamelor, Halcion, and other drugs). Likewise, she offers scant evidence for her conclusion that Wachtler ``spent his life concealing, perhaps even from himself, that his nature contained a dark as well as a bright side.'' Wolfe reduces an electrifying tale of power and disgrace into a lifeless narrative, and compelling figures into straw men. (Frist serial to Vanity Fair; Literary Guild selection)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-671-87480-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
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
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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