A generally apolitical memoir that is politically shrewd because of, not despite, its focus on the author's personal and...
A family oriented memoir from a rising superstar of the Republican party.
Rubio comes across as humble, principled and all too conscious of the sacrifices inherent in political life. Readers looking for a Tea Party jeremiad will be largely disappointed; though Rubio is forthright about his political and religious beliefs and gives a detailed account of his unlikely run for U.S. Senate, he writes with more specificity about his lifelong love for the Miami Dolphins than he does about any of his present legislative priorities. Instead, the apparent purpose of this memoir is to place Rubio’s political convictions in the context of his family history. The driving thesis of the book is that his success is an affirmation of the sacrifices members of his parents’ generation made so that their children could have the opportunity to achieve the American Dream. His personal political ambitions are especially meaningful because they represent the fulfillment of the hopes of not only his parents, but those of other Cuban refugees as well. He addresses the controversy of the timing of his parents’ arrival in America in a straightforward manner, and the prose is direct if not scintillating. He shows insight into his flaws, analyzes professional and personal mistakes, and extols the virtues of bipartisan cooperation. Rubio’s stories about his family are inarguably compelling and may help persuade a broader and more moderate electorate should he ever consider a national (vice-presidential?) run.
A generally apolitical memoir that is politically shrewd because of, not despite, its focus on the author's personal and family history.Pub Date: June 19, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-59523-094-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Sentinel
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
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
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