A unique, engaging memoir balancing personal story with broader social themes.
A pioneering pilot’s story of breaking gender barriers, fighting discrimination, and making peace with her experience.
In this debut memoir, Shipko takes readers through her career in aviation, from washing planes at her father’s fixed-based operation at a South Florida airport to becoming the first female pilot hired by Hughes Airwest, in 1976. Although she stopped flying in 1981, Shipko’s deep knowledge of aviation and the personalities of each plane she flew are evident in her detailed descriptions of flights taken decades ago. Her early years as a pilot were spent doing freelance flying out of Miami’s Corrosion Corner—“history, danger, and romance all wrapped up in one”—ferrying cargo and passengers throughout the Caribbean and Latin America. The tedium of loading and unloading tons of Bahamian fruits and vegetables was balanced by the opportunity for a swim on other island runs, delivering emergency supplies to Belize in the wake of a hurricane, and a night spent in a Colombian jail. During those Florida years, Shipko faced some antagonists and resistance to a woman in the cockpit, but that harassment was minor compared with the attacks at Hughes Airwest. Shipko writes with evident pride of her professional growth yet also describes in vivid detail the verbal, emotional, and physical harassment she faced from male pilots who resented her presence. The book places these experiences in historical context, long before companies were held liable for sexual harassment. When the stress of resisting and attempting to ignore the abuse caused serious health problems, Shipko took medical leave from Hughes Airwest and eventually retired from flying. Tracing her evolution in the decades since, she compellingly explores the roles her Catholic faith and family played in developing her understanding of the challenges she faced.
A unique, engaging memoir balancing personal story with broader social themes.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-1507667637
Page Count: 246
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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