A terrific work, notable for its gravity and humor, scholarship and popular appeal. (Illustrations throughout)
The little-known life of a gifted but cranky associate of Christopher Wren and bitter rival of Isaac Newton.
Jardine’s is the first full-scale portrait since 1956 of the cantankerous Hooke (1635–1703), a member of the Royal Society, co-restorer with Wren of London after the Great Fire of 1666, extraordinarily gifted inventor, designer, builder, artist, and scientist. The author begins with the most controversial of all of Hooke’s professional disputes, his argument with Newton about who should be credited for discovering the inverse square law of gravitational attraction. Hooke clearly had the insight, says Jardine (Renaissance Studies/Queen Mary Univ., London; On a Grander Scale, 2002, etc.), but not the mathematics to prove it, and so he wrote to Newton, who proved the theory and consequently soared into celebrity. Hooke gnashed his teeth publicly and privately for years afterward. The narrative then turns back to Hooke’s boyhood on the Isle of Wight, subsequently moving through his schooling in London and Oxford, his election to the Royal Society in 1663, and his incredibly busy career as an inventor, a presenter of weekly experiments for the edification of Society members, a professor of geometry at Gresham College, a writer, illustrator, experimenter—he enjoyed his tests with cannabis—and advocate for friends trying to publish their own works. Though he had a brief sexual relationship with a servant woman, Hooke never married and died miserably alone. Jardine carefully reconstructs her subject’s amazing career from diaries, correspondence, and public records. She most eloquently demonstrates that he and Wren should be jointly credited for the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire and convinces as well that Hooke’s irascible temperament, his tendency to take on more work than he could possibly finish, and his unprepossessing looks have consigned him to his current position as the forgotten runner-up to his more celebrated coevals.
A terrific work, notable for its gravity and humor, scholarship and popular appeal. (Illustrations throughout)Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2004
ISBN: 0-06-053897-X
Page Count: 432
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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