A master craftsman’s rendering of a character who needs no embellishment.
Auchincloss (Her Infinite Variety, 2000, etc.) trains his acute sensibility and elegant prose on our most colorful chief executive, rendering Teddy as a man of his time as well as a timeless example of principled leadership.
Auchincloss argues that Roosevelt’s bluster was his most human trait. The first president of the 20th century was given to loud talk and exaggeration. So what? asks the author. It masked his political shrewdness. To understand Roosevelt, one need only understand the policeman’s ethic, writes Auchincloss. Before all else, Teddy did what was right. And he enjoyed coming down hard on those who did wrong. His concept of the gentleman was tantamount to a chivalric code, right up to a man’s duty to fight for his country. Roosevelt insisted on expanding the American Navy, using its battleships on the international stage, and gladly sent his sons into WWI and WWII. He insisted on boxing with younger and stronger army officers, one of whom blinded him permanently in the left eye. Like a cop, Roosevelt was often bull-headed in his pursuit of what he thought was the right course of action. This stubbornness caused him trouble at the outset of WWI. First, Roosevelt gave the White House to the Democrats by opposing business-friendly Taft and splitting the Republicans. Then the ex-president had to put up with university professor Woodrow Wilson leading America into war. After Wilson ignored his predecessor’s request to lead a cavalry regiment against Germany—a foolish desire, given that Roosevelt had only a few more years to live—Teddy spent much of the rest of his life fulminating against the administration, one arguably more progressive than his. Auchincloss quotes extensively from Roosevelt’s writings, which are as awe-inspiring and dramatic as any novelist’s. It’s a wonderful way of bringing this giant to life on the page.
A master craftsman’s rendering of a character who needs no embellishment.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2001
ISBN: 0-8050-6906-2
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2001
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
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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