An epic look at the man and his music.
A painstakingly traced chronicle of the remarkable career of powerhouse proletarian rocker Bruce Springsteen.
If you want to understand the magic and majesty that is The Boss, the best way is though his music. However, Carlin (Paul McCartney: A Life, 2009, etc.) successfully fills in some of the gaps Springsteen has left behind in his lifelong journey—at least the gaps New Jersey’s favorite son now appears willing to address. As one of the most celebrated lyricists in the history of popular music, Springsteen remains a man of few words. In fact, many of the quotes attributed to him have already been published elsewhere. Like a lyric sheet, they often don’t say much absent the spark of music. Carlin’s own expressiveness, however, is another story and will no doubt have readers reaching for their favorite electronic music delivery system in an attempt to immediately corroborate his take on specific Springsteen tracks and performances. The author presents his subject as a supremely gifted musician and truly heroic figure, albeit one with a lot on his troubled mind. That darkness, attributed to bad genes and a childhood spent in the shadow of his parents’ gloom following a tragic death in the family, at times reduces the working-class icon to a moody, self-centered and callous taskmaster. Surprisingly, none of these observations—taken in part or as a whole—is particularly damning. On the contrary, they might even serve to ground the ubiquitous superstar, allowing him to become more human and, ultimately, more understandable.
An epic look at the man and his music.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4391-9182-8
Page Count: 480
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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