Breezily written and enjoyable, this book opens up a different perspective on the presidency.
Hannaford (Reagan's Roots: The People and Places that Shaped his Character, 2011, etc.), a Republican public relations specialist and associate of Ronald Reagan, adds to his writings on presidents and their office with a comprehensive discussion of presidential vacation retreats.
The author presents his material chronologically, by president. Each section concludes with a summary statement that provides details of the presidential homes, retreats, museums and libraries associated with each of the nation's leaders. The author provides addresses, phone numbers, websites, business hours and information about tours and other attractions, making it easy for people who live within reach of the presidential sites to visit. Some of the highlights: Long Branch, N.J., emerged as a popular summer watering hole for a number of post–Civil War presidents. Several sites, like Lincoln's Cottage at the Soldier's Home in NW Washington D.C.'s Armed Forces Retirement Home, have been extensively restored and opened to the public. There, Lincoln spent one-quarter of his presidency and drafted the Emancipation Declaration. Hannaford also discusses the activities presidents enjoyed at their retreats, including fishing, golf, wilderness hikes and yachting—e.g., Truman with the USS Williamsburg. Hannaford also provides brief biographical snapshots of each president and a concise outline of major developments and concerns during their years in office.
Breezily written and enjoyable, this book opens up a different perspective on the presidency.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-2714-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Threshold Editions/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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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