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THE BIG CHAIR

THE SMOOTH HOPS AND BAD BOUNCES FROM THE INSIDE WORLD OF THE ACCLAIMED LOS ANGELES DODGERS GENERAL MANAGER

A treasure trove of characterizations and insights bound to entertain any MLB fan.

The longtime Major League Baseball general manager covers the bases in a chatty memoir.

Alternating among declarations of his unabashed love for baseball, neutral reportage, and score-settling (usually with a smile and a subsequent peace offering), Colletti, whose career on the administration side covered decades with the Chicago Cubs, San Francisco Giants, and Los Angeles Dodgers, provides a variety of insights—among other subjects, about putting out fires as a GM accountable to a wealthy team owner, negotiating contracts with and making trades for players, getting a handle on illegal steroid use, and second-guessing field managers without seeming to interfere. The author, who began his career as a newspaper sportswriter, offers unforgettable, candid profiles of hundreds of players, including Greg Maddux, Barry Bonds, Manny Ramirez, and Yasiel Puig. Regarding the last, the immature, reckless behavior of players barely old enough to drink legally is a reminder of how much fans expect of athletes whose brains might not be fully formed yet. Superagent Scott Boras, a legend in his own time for his negotiating tactics on behalf of players, shows up in the text frequently, as do superstar players and managers that Colletti has hired and fired, a list that includes Joe Torre and Don Mattingly. Because the author grew up in the Chicago area, worked for area newspapers, and began his career with the Cubs, the book is larded with Cubs’ anecdotes, including the breaking of the century-plus curse to win the World Series in 2016. During his decade with the Dodgers (2005-2015), Colletti’s teams never won the World Series, but they finished strong during most of those seasons. The author could have broadened his memoir to discuss his mingling with celebrities beyond baseball, but he refrains from doing so except for a section about Frank Sinatra.

A treasure trove of characterizations and insights bound to entertain any MLB fan.

Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-7352-1572-6

Page Count: 464

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: July 2, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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

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WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR

A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...

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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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