Although occasionally too technical, an autobiography with universal appeal.
In Misconi’s (Studies of A Laser/Nuclear Thermal Hardened Body Armor, 1992, etc.) third book, an Iraqi native follows his dream and becomes one of the top space scientists in the United States.
Becoming a space scientist is difficult under any circumstances, but for Misconi, it was even more difficult than usual. A native of Iraq when that country’s space program was in its infancy, Misconi decided at a young age that space science was his career passion, which he pursued with single-minded determination. Today, having worked on such projects as the space shuttle, Skylab, and the Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars,” he is one of the leading experts in the U.S. on the myriad possibilities and problems in space. The book chronicles the path Misconi took to reach his current orbit. The account of his early years in Iraq is particularly interesting, showing that life in the pre–Saddam Hussein years wasn’t easy either, as when Misconi feared he would get in trouble for merely reporting that an ice sculpture statue of a general was melting. He was then the only astronomer in Iraq, and he recalls doing TV broadcasts with guns pointed at him. After he made his way to the U.S., Misconi’s research was often financed by “soft money” (i.e., grants and such), a precarious position due to the uncertainty of what would happen once the grant expired. While the book is mostly written so that non–rocket scientists can understand it, it doesn’t always qualify as light reading, particularly with sentences like: “The precession of the perihelion of Mercury was not due to the general relativity as Einstein postulated but due to the oblateness of the sun.” Still, following Misconi’s career—from conversing with astronaut Buzz Aldrin to working on high-profile space projects—shows that reaching for the stars isn’t impossible.
Although occasionally too technical, an autobiography with universal appeal.Pub Date: May 18, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4917-6165-6
Page Count: 298
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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