If as the author claims, ``friendship is distinctly underdeveloped'' as a field of study, this weak account of the relationship between David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill is unlikely to promote the concept. It is a pity, because Rintala (Western European Politics/Boston College) has some potentially intriguing material. British politics in the 20th century produced no more impressive figures than Lloyd George, leader of the Liberal Party and prime minister during WW I, and Churchill. Though one was born in relatively humble circumstances in Wales, and the other in Blenheim Castle, they had a surprising amount in common and their friendship lasted for 40 years. Neither went to university; both were adventurers; both were great orators; both led their country in great wars; both escaped the more dire consequences of misjudgment- -in each case, partly through the friendship of the other. The Marconi scandal, an imprudent investment in shares in the American Marconi Company while he was chancellor of the exchequer, might have brought Lloyd George down but for Churchill's help. Lloyd George brought Churchill into his cabinet after the disaster at Gallipoli, for which the latter was blamed by many Conservatives. Unfortunately, Rintala's account is permeated with the obvious (``Hatred is certainly present in politics, but people act out of love, as well''); with error (``Baldwin also hated Churchill''—in fact Stanley Baldwin made Churchill chancellor of the exchequer in the 1920s when he was at the nadir of his fortunes); with obscurity (``Even if a particular friendship were angelic, much humility, as C.S. Lewis saw, is needed if one is to eat the bread of angels without risk''); with gratuitous tastelessness (``There is no evidence that Lloyd George and Churchill had in any respect a sexual relationship with each other''); and with judgments of staggering incomprehension (``[Churchill] loved war more than he loved Lloyd George''). This book, unlike the friendship it chronicles, can't be saved.
Pub Date: March 1, 1995
ISBN: 1-56833-031-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1995
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.
