A reformed assassin's tell-all of the horrors endured and executed throughout his years in the Mexican drug trade.
Editors Molloy (Research Librarian/New Mexico State Univ.) and Bowden (Murder City, 2010, etc.) introduce the reader to the mysterious El Sicario, a high-level killer speaking out for the first time. While the editors offer the necessary frontmatter and editorial work, the vast majority of the book is dedicated to the assassin's first-person account. El Sicario charts his path from poverty-stricken child to notorious killer, citing an incident in his early years in which an unsuccessful attempt to defend his older brother's honor ended in his own beating. “This caused a lot of bitterness inside of me,” he says. “And I was traumatized that I was not able to defend myself.” The experience emboldened the young boy, prompting him to dedicate his adolescence to becoming a drug mule, fully aware of the power and wealth that accompanied the risk. “To be sixteen years old and to be able to live like this!” he says. “To have money and to be able to invite any girl I wanted to go out to eat in nice restaurants with me.” His adulthood was spent as a corrupt Mexican police officer, offering him clear access into the corruption within the force. He exposes the systematic organization of the drug traffickers themselves, how groups are trained for a singular murderous purpose—all part of an elaborate system to “obscure the knowledge of where all of these bodies are buried.” While somewhat unique, El Sicario's tale is also quite familiar—one in which the power of money, drugs and women all play a role in achieving the necessary numbness required to carry out unspeakable crimes.
Pub Date: June 14, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-56858-668-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Nation Books
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
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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