An informed correction to biographies that have demonized or lionized Toussaint. Note: Bell’s documentation is erratic;...
A sympathetic and sometimes necessarily speculative biography of the Haitian leader whose military and political acumen made possible the independence of his country—although he died in a French prison before the official declaration on Jan. 1, 1804.
Bell (English/Goucher Coll.; The Stone That the Builder Refused, 2004, etc.) artfully and gracefully assembles the wispy, elusive threads of Toussaint’s tale. He begins with background about Columbus’ arrival on the island he called Hispaniola and proceeds with a brief analysis of the importing of African slaves to work on the sugar plantations. Bell notes that we know little about Toussaint’s early years (spent on a plantation, where he worked with horses), but by the time the revolution exploded in 1791, he’d been free for about 15 years and had owned slaves himself. Bell astutely follows the complicated geo-politics involved in the revolution. England, France, Spain, the United States—all had an interest in the region; all, at one time or another, had land and/or naval forces near or on the island. And to varying extents, Toussaint allied himself with all of them, though he always, Bell persuasively argues, sought the abolition of slavery. Toussaint emerges as both accommodating (he endeavored to keep the plantation system—though with paid laborers) and sanguinary (he did not hesitate to order executions). Bell highlights the many parallels between the careers and capabilities of Napoleon and Toussaint; he shows how foreign military involvement can result in tragedy for all; he comments intelligently on the relationships between Voodoo and Catholicism.
An informed correction to biographies that have demonized or lionized Toussaint. Note: Bell’s documentation is erratic; sometimes he identifies his sources, sometimes he doesn’t.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2007
ISBN: 0-375-42337-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2006
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
