Amusing anecdotes and exotic backdrops keep readers engaged, but they do little to aid in understanding the complex society...
An entertainingly exhaustive, though imperfect, biography of an inscrutable monarch.
Few countries were changed as completely and irrevocably over the course of the 20th century as Saudi Arabia, and no leader shaped his country as thoroughly as did Ibn Saud (1876–1973). Husband to at least 20 women and father of “at least 45 sons and probably an even larger number of daughters”—a few of his sons have succeeded him as king—Ibn Saud began life as a Bedouin raider living in a tent and ended it as an all-powerful potentate worth billions of dollars, a transformation that resembles nothing so much as the history of his own homeland. Darlow and Bray (who died in 2010) collaborate on a comprehensive history of the only man in modern times to lend his name to a country, a rebranding that marked “the beginning of a shift from being a host of separate, often competing, tribes and regions into one coherent, centrally administered state.” The authors adroitly narrate the military and political maneuvers that consumed much of Ibn Saud’s attention, but the welter of detail they provide will overwhelm some readers. As Darlow and Bray chronicle the sprouting of skyscrapers and expressways in the shifting sands of one of the most traditionalist societies on earth—where even “the existence of barber shops and the practice of clapping” are controversial topics, and where women are famously treated as the property of their guardians—some of the more arcane minutia of the king’s life merely clouds the picture. Ultimately, readers may feel the book is both too long and too narrowly focused.
Amusing anecdotes and exotic backdrops keep readers engaged, but they do little to aid in understanding the complex society in which Ibn Saud lived.Pub Date: June 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-61608-579-7
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
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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