Exclusively for true believers. But even then . . .
A shambling account of the Bush family’s ascent to political prominence.
Hoover Institute fellow Peter (Reagan’s War, 2002, etc.) and media-consultant coauthor Rochelle Schweizer promote this as “the untold story of the remarkable rise of America’s most powerful family.” Fortunately, that’s not so; Kevin Phillips does the same work, and vastly better, in American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush (Jan. 2004). The authors portray the latter-day Bushes as a political clan that would do medieval Scotland proud, full of closely guarded secrets, walled off to outsiders, and shy of attracting attention (“the Bushes . . . have a disinterest [sic] in publicity because they consider themselves to be the ‘un-Kennedys’ ”)—very much like most other rich, powerful families, in other words. The authors trade in categorical statements that seldom hold up under scrutiny from one page to the next: “the Bushes by and large don’t believe in love at first sight,” they aver, before going on to describe Poppy and Bar’s, and later Dubya and Laura’s, whirlwind romances, textbook examples of, well, love at first sight. The Schweizers offer one useful thought: that the Bushes represent a model of devolution, or “inverse social climbing,” at work, with each generation becoming less patrician and cultured than its predecessor, a downward spiral from Wall Street to WalMart. Otherwise, this work is remarkably short on ideas, delving mostly into People magazine territory, whether writing of Laura’s bookishness (“she had a massive collection of books . . . and enjoyed thought-provoking literature like Dostoyevski’s Brothers Karamazov”), Dubya’s affability (“His ability to befriend his political opposites carried over from Austin”), or the clan’s making hay in whatever sun happens to be shining (“perhaps what separates them most from other political families is there [sic] sheer ability to adapt”).
Exclusively for true believers. But even then . . .Pub Date: April 6, 2004
ISBN: 0-385-49863-2
Page Count: 450
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2004
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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