A superior ballplayer, still a work-in-progress as a human being.
Arguably the game’s greatest offensive catcher recounts his controversial career.
Of all the Hall of Fame–worthy catchers of the past 40 years, few names start an argument more quickly than Mike Piazza. Chosen 1,390th by the Dodgers in the 1988 draft, a courtesy pick engineered by family friend Tommy Lasorda, Piazza went on to set the all-time home-run record for his demanding position, playing, as one observer remarked, “as if he is tearing somebody’s head off.” With the assistance of Wheeler (co-author: Sixty Feet, Six Inches: A Hall of Fame Pitcher and a Hall of Fame Hitter Talk About How the Game is Played, 2009, etc.), Piazza explains the reasons for this intense single-mindedness, an anger ballplayers describe as “a chronic case of the red-ass. ” The stink of his low draft position never really dissipated, he insists, retarding his progress in the minors, opening him up to charges of nepotism and leaving him at the mercy of the game’s politics. Jealousy over his family’s vast wealth, resentment of his interfering father’s widespread baseball connections and enduring skepticism over his defensive skills (a bum rap, he says) all conspired to deprive him of honors due—at least a couple of MVP awards—or even simple credit for the hard work he put in to excel. That unrelenting dedication is well-documented here, along with the season-by-season highlights of his sterling career, principally with the Dodgers and Mets. He addresses his famous confrontations with Roger Clemens, writes movingly about playing in New York when the twin towers fell and adamantly denies performance-enhancing drug rumors that threaten his Hall of Fame candidacy. A curious mix of fervent metal head and devout Catholic, Piazza appears to understand how his self-centeredness needlessly alienated many, but his apologies can barely be heard over the loud and constant rehashing of grievances.
A superior ballplayer, still a work-in-progress as a human being.Pub Date: Feb. 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4391-5022-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2013
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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