Tomasky’s slim, journalistic account contains few surprises for older readers familiar with that era, but they should wait a...
The latest in the excellent American Presidents series explores the life and career of Bill Clinton (b. 1946).
In this entertaining biography of a virtuoso politician whose administration (1993-2001) revived the fortunes of the Democratic Party without reversing the nation’s post-Reagan conservative swing, political journalist Tomasky (Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!: The Beatles and America, Then and Now, 2014, etc.) shows how his brilliant and charismatic subject aimed at a political career from childhood. After a bruising education in state politics and multiple terms as the governor of Arkansas, he outmaneuvered better-known candidates to win the 1992 Democratic nomination. The first baby-boomer president, he was a New Democrat who aimed to “keep his distance from some ‘old line’ liberal ideas, adapt and modify a few Republican ones, and exist as an independent force separate from both parties.” His success was spotty. Major bills such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, Defense of Marriage Act, and welfare reform were more popular with Republicans than Democrats and remain so. Most Republicans hated his national health plan, and they easily defeated it and then won a crushing victory in the 1994 midterm elections. Despite lofty goals in its “contract with America,” this aggressive Congressional majority became obsessed with Clinton’s spectacularly foolish sexual peccadilloes. Although legislators proclaimed that impure morals rendered a president unfit and the much-denounced “liberal media” shared their outrage, the electorate did not, and Clinton left office more popular than when he entered and remains popular. The author is clearly an admirer but is also painfully aware of Clinton’s failures.
Tomasky’s slim, journalistic account contains few surprises for older readers familiar with that era, but they should wait a generation until the dust settles and scholars determine if Clinton deserves his current respectable rating in the pantheon of presidents.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62779-676-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Times/Henry Holt
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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