One astronaut’s messy, exhilarating story, with no edges sanded off.
A pilot afflicted with arrested development grows up fast when he becomes a space-shuttle astronaut.
Navy pilots have Top Gun; investigative journalists have All the President’s Men; and astronauts will always see and be seen through the prism of The Right Stuff. West Point grad and hotshot Air Force pilot Mullane acknowledges as much in his memoir’s opening scene, which finds him and 19 others going through a rigorous set of tests in hopes of being selected as astronauts for the space-shuttle program (extended contact with an enema is involved). Mullane is eventually chosen to join the 1978 class of astronauts, who referred to themselves as TFNGs (Thirty-Five New Guys, a play on the military acronym for Fucking New Guy) and were about as mature and PC as drunk players on a high-school football team. Mullane longwindedly recalls the training process and tells stories of his childhood and married and military life. Along the way, we gain an appreciation for his love of bathroom humor, danger, rockets and other big machines that go really fast. (We also learn of the practical jokes he and his pilot buddies played on civilians.) Occasionally fun, these sections grow monotonous fast, but the books gains substantial traction once Mullane finally makes it into space onboard Discovery in 1984. It’s worth wading through his adolescent hijinks to get to these descriptions of the nerve-jangling launches, the rapturous beauty of space and the unbelievably foul living conditions aboard the ship (the mechanics of a zero-gravity toilet are worth hearing about). Mullane’s explanations of how he became disenchanted with NASA bureaucracy and his achingly tragic recollections of crewmates who perished in the Columbia tragedy raise this book above the ranks of the standard-issue boys-in-space memoir.
One astronaut’s messy, exhilarating story, with no edges sanded off.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2006
ISBN: 0-7432-7682-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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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