Republicans particularly need to read this book; it’s not really news to the Democrats.
Washington Post columnist and CNN global affairs analyst Boot (The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam, 2018, etc.) contemplates the collapse of the GOP under the poisonous influence of Donald Trump.
The author is convinced that the Republican Party will suffer repeated and devastating defeats for its embrace of extremism, conspiracymongering, ignorance, isolationism, and white nationalism. He feels those events will be necessary in order to rebuild as a center-right party. As much autobiography of a conservative as a political book, the narrative discusses Boot’s arrival in Los Angeles from the Soviet Union at age 7 and his early awakenings to politics. His intellectual heroes were William F. Buckley and George Will, and his political hero was Ronald Reagan. He went to college in Berkeley, “a town that never seemed to have left the sixties behind,” in the days of rallies and sit-ins. After writing editorials for a while, Boot joined the staff of the Christian Science Monitor. That neutral line, between opinion and news, has now been destroyed by the likes of Fox News, Infowars, and Breitbart. Added to that, the “alternative media” has become a massive phenomenon, giving rise to the populism proffered by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and others. The author’s move to the Wall Street Journal and the Council on Foreign Relations cemented his role as an uncompromising conservative. As readers follow the GOP fall through Boot’s eyes, many may wonder why it took him so long to leave. He states that the dark underside was always there. With Barry Goldwater in 1964, the GOP became a party of Southern whites, and the concept of states’ rights was nothing more than a euphemism for racism. Furthermore, the party’s refusal to support Barack Obama in his confrontation with the Kremlin contributed to the proliferation of Russian hacking. The Trump administration’s complete lack of ethics, sheer incompetence, and Cabinet toadyism are driving home the final nail.
Republicans particularly need to read this book; it’s not really news to the Democrats.Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63149-567-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
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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