In this monumental (752-page) review of Reagan's White House years, veteran Washington Post correspondent and Reagan-watcher Cannon (Reagan, 1982; Ronnie and Jessie, 1969) cements his reputation as one of the fairest and most knowledgeable reporters on the former President of his legacy. Although adhering primarily to a sympathetic view of the Great Communicator as an American visionary, Cannon still presents Reagan warts and all. From his first political victory, a landslide win over Pat Brown for governor of California, Reagan, Cannon shows, demonstrates his knack for reading an audience and being able to deliver a script. Elected President, he had the additional good fortune to arrive in Washington with a dedicated corps of aides who could prepare him, and protect him, extremely well. Patterns established in Reagan's earlier stint in public office survived the transition to the White House, with the nuts and bolts of governing delegated to trusted advisers such as Jim Baker, Michael Deaver, Ed Meese, and others, while the President was called in for policy decisions, to offer Hollywood anecdotes or touches of ``the vision thing,'' as then- Vice President George Bush referred to it, or to function as arbiter in the event of a dispute between factions-the result of which was invariably a compromise intended to mollify both parties. During his second term, Reagan's increasingly loose hand on the tiller, whether caused by disinterest or the ravages of old age, created crises large and small, the Iran-contra debacle among them. The historical highlights ranging from supply-side economics, deregulation, and tax reform to Nicaragua, Lebanon, and the Evil Empire are assessed by Cannon in detail, through published and private accounts and interviews recorded at the time and after the fact, with all major participants receiving the same insightful, objective attention. Complementing Garry Wills's Reagan's America (1986), this is a generous and informative commentary of a presidency that will not soon be forgotten. (Book-of-the-Month Dual Selection for July)
Pub Date: April 29, 1991
ISBN: 0-671-54294-X
Page Count: 752
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
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