Lackluster, overcomplicated chronicle of patricide and matricide in southern California. The morning after Gerry and Vera Woodman were gunned down in Brentwood, California, in September 1985, several members of the victims' family told cops that the couple's sons, Neil and Stewart, had orchestrated the slayings. By the time these accusations proved correct, police had engaged in a lengthy process of identifying four Las Vegas thugs who'd been spotted lurking near the murder site, and of linking them to the Woodman brothers by tracing hundreds of phone calls and interviewing witnesses who'd seen the suspects together. The legwork was fairly routine and, as detailed by Wolf (Fallen Angels, 1988 paperback) and Attebury, not especially exciting or ingenious. Meanwhile, the authors load their text with extraneous details—names and business histories of Woodman employees, backgrounds of minor witnesses, etc. They supply the necessary background, though, telling us that Gerry Woodman, a foul-mouthed bully, immigrated to US from England shortly after WW II. After taking up residence in California, he built a plastics- manufacturing business that bankrolled a luxurious lifestyle. But during the corporate-takeover frenzy of the early 1980's, Woodman's eldest sons wrested control of the company from their father, who vowed revenge. A major reason for Woodman's rage was that he was no longer able to skim millions of dollars annually from the company, a practice that for decades had financed his gambling habit and numerous mistresses. Neil and Stewart continued the skimming, though their money went to sprawling mansions, prestigious autos, and designer originals for their wives. But the sons lacked their father's business sense and, by 1985, the company faced bankruptcy. Neil and Stewart, desperate for cash, planned to collect on a $500,000 insurance policy on their mother's life and use it to salvage the firm. A complex tale lacking in narrative drive—but of interest for its Oresteian picture of a family bent on self-destruction. (Photos)
Pub Date: Sept. 29, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-016569-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
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
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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