Dino light and lively; anyone seeking a probing look at the life of Dean Martin should look elsewhere—probably at Nick...
A biography of singer-actor Martin that has the pace, diffidence and depth of one of Martin’s T.V. variety shows.
In this relentlessly upbeat rehash of Martin’s life, Freedland breezes through familiar territory, and, while not shying away from negative terrain, seldom digs for answers or conclusions to questions surrounding Martin’s life and career. The famous Martin and Jerry Lewis partnership, for example, receives due attention as Freedland charts their rise and fall, presenting both sides of their eventual break-up. But were the “pardners” equally to blame for the breach? And what emotional bonds apparently held fast between them after they pursued separate careers? Likewise, tracing Martin’s major success as an actor and singer, Freedland hits all the marks, yet offers little insight. Did Martin work harder than his laid-back performance demeanor suggested? Was he a natural as an actor, or did he woodshed his parts behind the scenes, as the strength of some of his performances suggests? Freedland also offers a very detailed look at the workings of Martin’s greatest success, his TV variety show. The account certainly benefits histories of American television, but skirts key matters that define Martin’s winning image. What can be learned from his popularity? Why did audiences welcome Martin into their homes for 18 years? Was it because the fabulously wealthy charter member of the obnoxious Rat Pack really seemed like a happy neighbor ready to kick back, pour a drink and get high in the den? Perhaps readers who loved Dino will care less as they once more flip through his story.
Dino light and lively; anyone seeking a probing look at the life of Dean Martin should look elsewhere—probably at Nick Tosches’s Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams (1992).Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2006
ISBN: 1-86105-882-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Robson Books/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2005
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
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
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