An absolutely memorable book.
A veteran science journalist uses the story of Lonni Sue Johnson, a young woman who suffered a severe infection that destroyed her hippocampus, to illuminate his journey into the murky subject of memory itself.
Scientific American opinion editor Lemonick (Mirror Earth: The Search for Our Planet’s Twin, 2012, etc.) skillfully employs both a personal voice—he knew the victim’s sister from middle school—and a scholarly authority as he travels through the incredible life of Lonnie Sue, a successful artist (among other projects, she produced covers for the New Yorker) and writer whose life changed forever in late 2007 when the infection hit her. Her nonagenarian mother and her sister swooped in to care for her in ways that seem miraculous in today’s warehouse-the-elderly and -disabled culture. Since the destruction of the region of the brain responsible for “relational processing,” Lonni Sue has maintained a cheerful, friendly manner (despite her inability to remember people she has just met) and shows an astonishing capacity for word games. She can also still play her viola, can describe how to fly a plane (she had a pilot’s license), and can draw—and much more. Lemonick focuses on her case and biography, but he has larger goals: to acquaint us with the history of research on memory, to review some of the most notable cases in memory loss, and to help us comprehend current theories about types of memory—and how memory works. (He even provides a bit of film criticism—Memento comes off fairly well; 50 First Dates does not.) Although there are some familiar names—Oliver Sacks, William James—most of his references are to working neuroscientists today. His great accomplishment is helping us see the “new” Lonni Sue as a most remarkable person.
An absolutely memorable book.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53966-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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