Sometimes overly gushing and perhaps premature but bolstered with enough evidence.
An overview of President Barack Obama’s two-term presidency: his successes, failures, and incompletions.
Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist D’Antonio (Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success, 2015 etc.) takes a broad, generous look at the entire Obama administration and finds many solid arguments that he indeed delivered the “change” that he promised in 2008. Amazingly, Obama did not allow the GOP obstructionism to wreck his presidency, as planned by Mitch McConnell, who vowed that Obama’s presidency would be “divisive and controversial.” For example, the new president was able to pass the much-needed economic Recovery Act as one of his first acts, thanks to the still-Democratic majority in Congress. His bailout of the auto industry was much criticized at the time, and its startling success prompted the Economist, which argued that “GM deserved extinction,” to apologize in its pages one year later. While many had voted Obama in to wage a “revolution” and then were disappointed at the slow pace, D’Antonio shows how, over the course of the eight years of Obama’s presidency, the accumulation of accomplishments proved to be revolutionary—e.g., his ability to pass health care reform when previous leaders could not manage it, galvanize the alternative-energy fields of wind and solar power “after decades of promise” by previous presidents to wean the country off oil, and draw back the troops in the Middle East. The recognition of the causes of global warming and the science behind it proved liberating for the environmental movement (e.g., at the climate conference in Paris in 2015), while the execution of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden galled the Republicans to no end. The author also looks at Obama’s mixed results in education and financial reform, gun control, and the long-promised closure of Guantánamo Bay prison. On the other hand, the president evolved courageously in human rights such as LGBT equality and equal pay for women.
Sometimes overly gushing and perhaps premature but bolstered with enough evidence.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-08139-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
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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