A taut, terse Holocaust narrative that is all the more powerful for its ironic reserve. Adelsberger (18951971), a noted German-Jewish immunologist, spent her internment in Auschwitz as a physician in the Gypsy camp (until its liquidation in July 1944) and later in the women's camp. In efficiently yet movingly rendered episodes, she conveys all the horrors of concentration camp life, and in particular the squalor of the so-called infirmary where she worked, where typhus victims lay in feces-covered blankets and kindness was all the medical aid Adelsberger could offer. She gives visceral descriptions of terror (``Fear clings to the walls in your bedroom, crawls along the floor, and drips down from the ceiling'') and physical suffering; and paints vivid portraits of moral degradation and of defiance on the part of those who have nothing left to lose (a young woman about to be executed slashes her wrists and smears her blood on the face of the camp commandant). Adelsberger's rage smolders under the cool, hard surface of her irony. How else to describe the camp dentist, ``a good-natured man'' who ``saved some from starvation, including a whole group of beautiful Gypsy women, one after the other of whom found their way into his chamber''? Adelsberger refuses even to name Josef Mengele, referring to him only as ``the camp physician,'' as though to depersonalize him the way internees were depersonalized when they were given numbers in place of their names. How else can one deal with a doctor who sends hundreds to their deaths every day, then visits the infirmary and hands out candies to the sick, starved children? Adelsberger was liberated after being evacuated to RavensbrÅck, and her memoir was published in German in 1956. It is a notable addition to the list of testimonies available in English about that darkest period of human history. (illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: Oct. 30, 1995
ISBN: 1-55553-233-0
Page Count: 163
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1995
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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