A breezy trot through the life and career of a true show business legend. After writing biographies of artists who were far more likable on-stage than off (Nobody's Fool: The Lives of Danny Kaye, 1994, etc.), it must have been a pleasure for Gottfried to turn to the thoroughly lovable near-centenarian George Burns (this book will be published on his 100th birthday). However, in writing this first biography of the comedian, the author encountered a major obstacle that he has not entirely conquered. Burns himself has written several autobiographies and memoirs, and despite Gottfried's extensive research, there is little in the first two-thirds of this work that will come as a surprise to readers of those books. Here again is Burns's childhood poverty, his long period of failure in vaudeville, his professional and personal courting of Gracie Allen, the great success of the Burns and Allen team, his loving, laugh- filled friendship with Jack Benny, etc. It is in detailing the period following Gracie's retirement in 1958 that Gottfried comes into his own. Burns has written of this time as well, but Gottfried gives the story new perspective. We see Burns's fears of working solo and his failed attempts to recreate the old act with new partners (among them Ann-Margaret, whom he discovered), leading to the near-total collapse of his career entering the '70s (and his 70s). And then the miracle: Benny, nearing death, passes the lead in Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys to Burns, who wins an Oscar and begins a second career at 80. Gottfried paints the artist's comeback years with compassion and insight. According to Gottfried, this last year has been a sad one, with ill health leading to cancellations of many 100th birthday tributes. This leaves 99 wonderful years of George Burns. It's not enough. The love Gottfried has for George Burns matches that of the reader, making this biography an occasion for laughter and misty eyes. (8 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Jan. 20, 1996
ISBN: 0-684-81483-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
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
© 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.
