Wrong’s fiery prose boils the blood and burns infamy into the memory. (2 maps, not seen)
A near-lethal combination of colonialism, Cold War bluster, war and disastrous decision-making has pushed Eritrea, perched atop Ethiopia, to the precipice of history.
Wrong, who has corresponded for the BBC and the Financial Times, returns to Africa with an analysis every bit as devastating as her In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz (2001). The scope of her research is astonishing. She visited the country numerous times—in its various manifestations of calm, disarray, chaos, hope and despair; she interviewed key personalities; she read everything directly relevant—and much that’s usefully illustrative. Most important, she thought deeply about how this small country has somehow attracted the notice of powers and superpowers. The title refers to a vicious crack made to an old black woman by a swaggering British officer after an important military victory over the Italians on Eritrean soil: “We didn’t do it for you, nigger.” Indeed. The West has not done much for the country, in Wrong’s analysis, except exploit it in times of self-interest and ignore it otherwise. Wrong begins with some allusions to Lost Horizon and with some lyrical aerial descriptions of Eritrea (a conflation of the Latin for “Red Sea”), then retreats into history to tell us the sad story of this country’s struggles. Before WWII, the Italians came, erecting beautiful buildings and building railways in unimaginably difficult terrain. The British drove them out during WWII, then in turn yielded to the Americans, who saw on an Eritrean high plateau a perfect spot for electronic eavesdropping. Among the nastiest sections in this nasty volume concern the tenure of the Americans, who behaved with an abominable disrespect for the people and the place. “Ugly American” is too pale a term. Then came the Cold War and the senseless, destructive global posturing in Africa by the superpowers, and ruinous, sanguinary wars with Ethiopia.
Wrong’s fiery prose boils the blood and burns infamy into the memory. (2 maps, not seen)Pub Date: June 14, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-078092-4
Page Count: 448
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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