Occasionally smug, but attentive and well-composed.
The author of Composing a Life (1991) urges older readers to use their wisdom and energy to shape a further meaningful life and to engage with and contribute to society.
Bateson (Arabic Language Handbook, 2003, etc.), a visiting scholar at the Center on Aging and Work/Workplace Flexibility at Boston College, argues that the extension of the human life span in the past century does not mean an extension of old age but rather a longer period of adult life. Adding to psychoanalyst Erik Erikson’s eight life-cycle stages, she looks at a new period of extended vitality that she calls “Adulthood II,” an age of “active wisdom.” To explore the contributions of individuals in Adulthood II, Bateson recorded conversations with a variety of men and women who have reached this stage. Among them are a former Maine boat-yard worker turned jewelry maker in Arizona; an activist who founded several nonprofit organizations; a gay music teacher who works with autistic children; a retired cathedral dean who set up an interfaith center; and a white lawyer who started a journal of blacks in higher education. With Jane Fonda, the author discusses the relationship of age and spirituality, providing a portrait of the actress that contrasts sharply with the popular images of her as radical Vietnam war protester or beautiful exercise queen. The stories provide examples of people dealing with transitions in their lives, finding strategies to deal with new conditions and relationships, figuring who they are and what they want. The conversations, which have been largely crafted into essays, are not only lengthy but two-way, with Bateson including numerous details from her own interesting life. Her takeaway message is that the rich past experiences of those in Adulthood II can lead to the composition of a still-productive life and that older adults, now relatively free from daily responsibilities, can combine their wisdom with energy and commitment to have a positive effect on society.
Occasionally smug, but attentive and well-composed.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-307-26643-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Chronology, photographs and personal knowledge combine to make a memorable commemorative presentation.
Jackie Kennedy's secret service agent Hill and co-author McCubbin team up for a follow-up to Mrs. Kennedy and Me (2012) in this well-illustrated narrative of those five days 50 years ago when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
Since Hill was part of the secret service detail assigned to protect the president and his wife, his firsthand account of those days is unique. The chronological approach, beginning before the presidential party even left the nation's capital on Nov. 21, shows Kennedy promoting his “New Frontier” policy and how he was received by Texans in San Antonio, Houston and Fort Worth before his arrival in Dallas. A crowd of more than 8,000 greeted him in Houston, and thousands more waited until 11 p.m. to greet the president at his stop in Fort Worth. Photographs highlight the enthusiasm of those who came to the airports and the routes the motorcades followed on that first day. At the Houston Coliseum, Kennedy addressed the leaders who were building NASA for the planned moon landing he had initiated. Hostile ads and flyers circulated in Dallas, but the president and his wife stopped their motorcade to respond to schoolchildren who held up a banner asking the president to stop and shake their hands. Hill recounts how, after Lee Harvey Oswald fired his fatal shots, he jumped onto the back of the presidential limousine. He was present at Parkland Hospital, where the president was declared dead, and on the plane when Lyndon Johnson was sworn in. Hill also reports the funeral procession and the ceremony in Arlington National Cemetery. “[Kennedy] would have not wanted his legacy, fifty years later, to be a debate about the details of his death,” writes the author. “Rather, he would want people to focus on the values and ideals in which he so passionately believed.”
Chronology, photographs and personal knowledge combine to make a memorable commemorative presentation.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4767-3149-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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