The story of two brothers and the turmoil, in the Catholic Church and American society, through which they have lived. Philip and Daniel Berrigan gained fame in the 1960s for such dramatic acts of war resistance as pouring blood on draft files; they remain among the best-known Catholic priests in America, even though neither holds positions of significant influence in the Church (Philip married, and left the priesthood in 1973). Journalists Polner (No Victory Parades: The Return of the Vietnam Veteran, 1971) and O'Grady (Dorothy Day: With Love for the Poor, not reviewed) move beyond the well-known episodes to examine the Berrigan brothers' lives in context: how they came to be relentless foes of war and how their decades of uncompromising protest- -continuing to the present—have affected their country, church, friends, and opponents. The Berrigans' fervor is traced to their working-class Catholic upbringing. Reflective, intellectual Daniel, scorned by a violent and rigid father, joined the Jesuits as a teenager. The more worldly Philip, two years younger, came to the priesthood only after stints as a soldier and college student. Ordained in the 1950s, both were activists virtually from the beginning, progressing by the late 1960s to the point where they were openly at war with their government and with the Church hierarchy. As charismatic teachers and priests, as radicals willing to go to jail for their beliefs, the brothers developed an influence (with Daniel's poetry helping to convey the message) that spread through a generation of peace activists and a Catholic community energized by the liberalizing reforms of Pope John XXIII. A fascinating and well-told story, but not fully satisfying. The source of the passion driving the Berrigans' deeds remains elusive, perhaps through no fault of the authors: The brothers, who confess to near-absolute certainty in their moral choices, harbor few of the doubts that help humanize and illumine most lives. (b&w illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: Jan. 29, 1997
ISBN: 0-465-03084-X
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1996
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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