Deeply informative—Bostridge probes reverently but with confidence.
Thoroughgoing biography of the Englishwoman whose service during the Crimean War and subsequent writings revolutionized the disciplines of nursing and public health.
Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) is a legendary name whose historical significance remains shrouded in myth. Bostridge (co-author, Vera Brittain, 1995) does an admirable job of demythologizing the “lady with the lamp,” so called after an iconic depiction of her administering to soldiers appeared in the Illustrated London News in 1855. The biography’s first section concerns Nightingale’s intense frustration with the stifling dictates of upper-middle-class life. Educated at home by progressive, well-connected parents, she grew up with an elder sister at the family estate in Derbyshire, longing always to embrace an occupation that would enable her to minister to the sick and the poor: nursing. But nurses at the time were basically untrained domestic servants, and her family used emotional blackmail to dissuade Nightingale from a profession deemed unsuitable for a lady of her class. She was nearly 30 when she finally managed to undergo rudimentary nursing training in Germany, 33 when she became superintendent of London’s Upper Harley Street Establishment for Gentlewomen During Illness. Horrified by eyewitness accounts from the Crimean War of ghastly conditions, neglect and mismanagement of the wounded, Nightingale in 1854 used her connections to help organize an expedition of nurses to the Scutari Hospital in Istanbul. The success of this operation jump-started her commitment to the reform of sanitary conditions in the British army (especially in India), hospitals and workhouses. She used her prestige to raise money to found a Nightingale Training School for nurses at St. Thomas’ Hospital, London, in 1860. She also wrote widely; books such as Notes on Nursing and the novella Cassandra are neglected documents of mid-19th-century feminism. Reminding readers that much of Nightingale’s life was spent as an invalid, Bostridge underscores the significance of her public-health accomplishments. He considers the sentimental appeal of Nightingale’s legend, while trying not to be “beguiled by her heady sense of the dramatic.”
Deeply informative—Bostridge probes reverently but with confidence.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-374-15665-7
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2008
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
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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