A recounting of the turn-of-the-century exploits of Bill Miner, ``one of the most wanted outlaws in North America.'' He also turns out to have been one of the least colorful. Dugan (Interdisciplinary Studies/Appalachian State Univ.) and Boessenecker (Badge and Buckshot, 1988) attempt to breathe dramatic life into their protagonist with frequent references to Billy the Kid, Butch Cassidy, et al., but Miner, it seems, was about as exciting as oatmeal. Born in 1846 in Michigan, he moved in 1860 with his family to the California gold-rush town of Yankee Jims. Soon, the teenager began his criminal career, starting out by stealing horses, then moving up to robbing stagecoaches. When trains replaced coaches, Miner made the switch with aplomb, though his success was spotty: During his career, he spent more than 30 years at San Quentin and other jails. Many of his escapades were almost comic, complete with slipping masks, uncooperative sticks of dynamite, and hoboes wandering unwittingly onto the scene. Meanwhile, the authors contend that Miner was the first gay outlaw in the Old West—but their evidence for this claim is nebulous. That the bandit engaged in homosexual activities while behind bars is unsurprising, and that he frequently traveled with young men is hardly irrefutable proof that he was gay. Because, in his later years, ``Old Bill'' invariably targeted the widely hated railroads, he acquired a reputation for stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. From the evidence here, though, his generosity was largely imaginary. The authors are at their best, however, when discussing the folkloric elements in Miner's ``Robin Hood'' reputation. Occasionally diverting but mostly as grim as a sheriff's posse. (Seventy-three photos.)
Pub Date: June 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-8061-2435-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Univ. of Oklahoma
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1992
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
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