In this far-reaching, perceptive study of the tragic hero of the Little Bighorn, Barnett (English/Rutgers Univ.) traces the events of the postCivil War decade leading up to the ``Last Stand'' and examines how Custer became firmly rooted in the American imagination. Barnett successfully navigates beyond the tired, opprobrious clichÇs apportioning blame and demanding answers for the deaths of 263 troopers of Custer's Seventh Calvary. She aims instead to present the historical, social, and mythic context that continues to lend disproportionate weight to a relatively unimportant battle. Like other historians and biographers before her, she recounts the multitude of reasons for the destruction of Custer's forces but avers that the ``mystery'' behind his defeat was engendered by the ``stubbornly rooted belief that whites could always outfight Indians . . . There had to be some aberration, some unknown circumstance, some flagrant departure from reason or plan to account for what was otherwise unimaginable, hence mysterious.'' Custer's phoenixlike career is ably detailed, set within the context of a fascinating, sometimes chilling portrait of the violent, gaudy frontier society of the period. Custer's prominence in the pantheon of American heroes has been largely due to Libbie Custer's ceaseless devotion to his memory for the entire 57-year span of her widowhood. Libbie memorialized her husband by writing three popular memoirs, delivering speeches, and overseeing the sculpting and dedication of statues in various parts of the country. The events at the Little Bighorn, Barnett demonstrates, swiftly passed into the realm of myth, where they remain, despite recently unearthed historical evidence that casts a much clearer light on what happened that day. Both Custer-phobes and Custer-philes would do well to study this work, but it may just as profitably be read as a major addition to the history of American culture. (For another life of Custer, see Jeffry D. Wert, Custer: The Controversial Life of George Armstrong Custer, p. 592.)
Pub Date: June 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-8050-3720-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1996
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
SEEN & HEARD
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