Lags toward the end, but a persuasive study of an unusual life.
Diligently researched biography of the young woman responsible in the mid-1800s for the growth of spiritualism, sympathetically addressing her ambivalence about the practice and her legacy.
Maggie Fox (1833–93) grew up in upstate New York, birthplace of many 19th-century sects. Though Stuart (American Empress, 1995, etc.) capably chronicles this period of religious ferment, she is more concerned with Maggie herself. Fifteen when her family moved from urban Rochester to the small village of Hydesville, Maggie found life in the country boring; the author suggests that this boredom led her and younger sister Katy to create the mysterious knockings and rappings they claimed were messages from the spirits. Soon neighbors were arriving in droves to hear them. Older sister Leah, who had married and remained in Rochester, saw the commercial possibilities and invited Maggie and Katy to stay with her. In the city they acquired a large following, which grew even larger when they appeared in Philadelphia and New York. Befriended by noted journalist Horace Greeley and other distinguished citizens, the sisters became sought-after celebrities. They were dutiful and compliant as their work enriched Leah and the rest of the family, but in 1852 Maggie fell in love with Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, a noted Arctic explorer. He also professed his affection, but begged Maggie to give up spiritualism, which he thought demeaning as well as fraudulent. Stuart vividly details the course of their ill-starred romance; the lawsuits that followed Kane’s death; the consequences of Maggie’s announcement in 1888 that spiritualism was a fraud; and her subsequent addictions to alcohol and opium. Though Maggie recanted her “confession” a year later and resumed holding séances, spiritualism never fully recovered from her initial exposé. Yet its legacy endures, Stuart suggests, reflected in the current interest in New Age and neo-pagan traditions.
Lags toward the end, but a persuasive study of an unusual life.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-15-101013-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2004
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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