Fortunately, the emphasis falls on political involvement, not on sentiment. (32 b&w photos, not seen)(Author tour)
It's political activism, and not the usual soft, show-biz patter, that mostly sustains this joint autobiography.
Some disclosures we could do without, such as information on Dee and Davis's intended funeral arrangements - and the details of their open marriage. But otherwise, this venerable couple of stage, screen, and television (and a host of political causes) acquit themselves well in summarizing their more than 50 years of marriage and business. Although they do not fully explain the roots of their activism, their faces have had a knack for popping up in surprising places. They were deeply involved in Paul Robeson's efforts, for instance, to retrieve his passport from the US government, and later in the anti-McCarthy battle being waged by Actor's Equity against the House Un-American Activities Committee. Speaking up for Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, Dee was labeled "a black pinko" and "fellow traveler." But she also won a role as a defending angel in a Sholom Aleichem play. Meanwhile, Davis delivered the assassinated Malcolm X's eulogy. Ubiquitous though they've been, the couple attest to no major career "breakthroughs." But while neither pretends to Hollywood or Broadway stardom, they have both appeared in numerous movies and television shows. Davis, originally from Georgia, and Dee (from Harlem by way of Cleveland), span black theater going back to Harlem in the 1940s. Davis was with the Rose McClendon Players and Dee with the American Negro Theatre. Regrettably, we learn few specifics of their experiences there. In fact, much of this book has to do with family, friends, relatives, and the couple's married life. That's when it becomes a tad embarrassing - even maudlin.
Fortunately, the emphasis falls on political involvement, not on sentiment. (32 b&w photos, not seen)(Author tour)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-688-15396-8
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
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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