A cleareyed and honest account of some transformative experiences in the life of the gifted young man who would become a...
The experiences of and changes in Martin Luther King Jr. during his three years (1948-1951) at Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania.
Parr, a historian who has written about King in Seattle Magazine and elsewhere, debuts with a work that focuses sharply on a somewhat neglected period of the Nobel laureate’s life (1929-1968), the period when he left home—and paternal expectations—in Atlanta, traveled north, and began discovering who he was and what he must do. The text, sturdily chronological, features some key biographical details: for each term, we see the class schedule of King (whom the author refers to as “ML” throughout—as did King’s intimates); the course descriptions from the Crozer catalog; and detailed information about his professors and classmates. Quoting occasionally from the papers King wrote at Crozer, the author is fearless about recording and commenting on King’s patent plagiarism; he was fond of writing extensive passages, sometimes almost verbatim from his sources, and neglecting quotation marks or any form of citation. Although Parr doesn’t excuse King’s academic deceit, he does note that King’s professors never did anything about it. The author also explores King’s personal life during these years: his friends, his leisure activities (including pool and basketball—good at the former, not the latter), and his love life, including a rather extensive relationship with the white daughter of Crozer’s cook, a relationship that worried friends and others. The late 1940s and early 1950s, even in the North, were not especially tolerant of interracial dating. Parr concludes with King’s admission to the doctorate program at Boston University and finishes with some updates on key characters and on Crozer itself, now merged elsewhere, its campus closed.
A cleareyed and honest account of some transformative experiences in the life of the gifted young man who would become a cultural icon.Pub Date: April 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-915864-12-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Lawrence Hill Books/Chicago Review
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
