by Michael F. Holt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 2004
Important but occasionally tedious analysis of a most critical period in our history. (map; 8 pp. b&w illustrations, not...
It wasn’t slavery per se but the debates about the extension of slavery into new territories and states that sent the nation careening into civil war, argues Holt (History/Univ. of Virginia) in a work that aims at a broader audience than did his The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party (1999).
As in that comprehensive, scholarly history, the author returns to the era of presidents whose visages will never adorn Mt. Rushmore (Polk, Taylor, Pierce, Buchanan) and politicians whose personal interests trumped the interests of the nation. (Stephen A. Douglas worked hard for the transcontinental railroad, in part to make sure it would pass through some of his land holdings.) With the confidence born of intimate knowledge, Holt guides us through some extraordinary complexities: the Missouri Compromise, the Mexican War, the Wilmot Proviso, the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act. He explores the reasoning and motivations of some of the most well-known names in American history, including Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John C. Calhoun. He does not, however, see much honor among the political thieves of the era. “Politicians made decisions,” he writes, “from short-term calculations of partisan, factional, or personal advantage rather than from any long-term concern for the health, indeed, the very preservation of the Union.” Holt implies that times have not changed much, and perhaps it was the contemporary parallels that led him, as he states in the text, to attempt both to sharpen the focus of his study of American Whigs and to attract a more general readership. He has certainly accomplished the former: few passages deal with anything other than politics, with glimpses of Harriet Beecher Stowe and John Brown providing occasional relief. But attracting a general readership is a more dubious proposition. Holt’s prose is heavy, leaden, and veers at times into the inelegant.
Important but occasionally tedious analysis of a most critical period in our history. (map; 8 pp. b&w illustrations, not seen)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-8090-9518-1
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2004
Share your opinion of this book
More by Michael F. Holt
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Share your opinion of this book
More by Elie Wiesel
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
Awards & Accolades
Likes
18
Our Verdict
GET IT
Google Rating
Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2016
New York Times Bestseller
Pulitzer Prize Finalist
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
Share your opinion of this book
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.