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Death Is Not "The End"

Fans of the movie Ghost will enjoy this tale of love surviving death.

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A skeptic gains a new outlook on life after her husband’s premature death from cancer.

“It is difficult to formulate words for what has happened,” Berlin writes in her thoughtful nonfiction debut. “You see, a revelation of this magnitude requires a whole new vocabulary on my part.” The revelation in question is one of many, all happening in the wake of the death of Berlin’s husband, Max, from cancer on December 23, 2003. Berlin, who was once agnostic, lost her husband and soon afterward began to experience strange phenomena, intimations of Max’s continued presence. On New Year’s Day 2004, she imagined she heard his voice repeating the kinds of joshing things he used to say when he was alive. “I don’t pretend to completely understand what happened on January 1st,” she says, “but one thing I do know is, it happened.” At one point, she prays to God to hear his voice again, and the next day, while hunting for batteries for the TV remote, she stumbles across a tape recorder with a recording of Max’s voice still in it. Dozens of similar coincidences—light bulbs burning out, books falling off shelves, appliances suddenly turning on, etc.—convince Berlin that the man she describes as her best friend is still with her. Here, she studies the psychological phenomena of cognitive dissonance and the theoretical possibilities of parallel dimensions, investigations interspersed with touching memories of her life with Max. Readers who’ve lost a loved one will immediately sympathize with much of what Berlin relates. Skeptical readers might view her book less as an account of supernatural survival and more as a journal of grief grasping for something real. Nevertheless, her tale of an interrupted love story still resonates.

Fans of the movie Ghost will enjoy this tale of love surviving death.

Pub Date: June 3, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-4582-1709-7

Page Count: 324

Publisher: AbbottPress

Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2015

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WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR

A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...

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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

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THE 48 LAWS OF POWER

If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.

The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.

Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.

If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998

ISBN: 0-670-88146-5

Page Count: 430

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998

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