A premature biography that will interest devoted royal watchers.
A look at how the rascally fourth in line to the British throne has been forgiven youthful indiscretions but faces serious career decisions at age 30.
English journalist and royal biographer Junor (Prince William, 2012, etc.) certainly knows her way around the royal PR office; she’s written about the rest of the family, so why not Prince Harry? In approaching this second Windsor son—beloved yet mischievous, a somewhat reckless rugby player and thrill-seeking Apache pilot—the author tries to establish her journalistic objectivity in the first paragraph by addressing his recent fall from grace, when he was caught on camera playing strip billiards with a bunch of young ladies in a Las Vegas hotel room. “It was probably a classic example of me probably being too much Army and not enough prince,” he remarked wryly. Yet Junor is sympathetic to this strawberry-blond athlete of charming mien and winning ways: He’s “impulsive, unpredictable and dangerous,” she says, but that’s his “genius.” Genius or not, he didn’t attend university like his older brother, William, but opted for Sandhurst military academy after Eton, having become enamored as a child by soldier play and spectacle at the annual Royal Tournament with his mother, Princess Diana. His early life with Diana was both deliciously magical and weirdly unnatural, since the Wales’ marriage went sour early on; Junor squarely blames Diana for the emotional turmoil in the house(s) and the comings and goings of various male visitors she did not hide. Recently, Harry has moved out of his brother’s shadow, embracing some good causes approved of by his father. For instance, in 2006 he helped establish Sentebale, which helps the “forgotten children” of AIDs-ravaged Lesotho, where he spent his gap year, and in 2012, he did energetic work as ambassador for his country at the London Olympics.
A premature biography that will interest devoted royal watchers.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-1455549832
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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