Loaded with lesser-known multicultural tidbits, this account of a family’s adventures proves engaging, gritty, and buoyant.
A debut memoir recalls a writer’s decades of non-governmental organization work in the far reaches of the world’s developing countries.
In 1972, a serendipitous invitation from a college coach set the stage for McDonald’s professional future. For six weeks during that summer break, the 20-year-old author led a team of college students that traveled to the recently established Central African Republic to lend a hand at the “jungle station,” a large compound in Bangassou. “A few weeks in Africa changed me,” he writes, “as it shook me out of my cultural blinders.” It also taught him that he thrived on adrenaline. The story of his return to Africa the following summer provides one of the most vivid, hair-raising anecdotes of his extraordinary life. As he and his companions were asleep in a tent, McDonald was awakened by the sound of panting: “A few seconds later I heard it again, except this time with a deep, low growl, the kind of sound only a lion can produce.” He was separated from the prowling beast by only the canvas of the tent. He returned to the United States to complete his undergraduate education, received his master’s degree, and earned a doctorate specializing in “international planning, policy analysis, and development economics.” Along the way, he met and married his soul mate, Rebecca, an American who was raised in Bangladesh, where her parents established a hospital in the jungle. In 1985, with two toddlers in tow, the McDonalds accepted their first NGO assignment and were stationed in Bangladesh. It is not often that a memoir about work can be described as a page-turner, but the author has produced a rare, captivating narrative potpourri of professional accomplishments, discourses on sensitivity to cultural diversity, and unique, often dangerous personal experiences. He also makes a convincing case for his philosophical approach: to establish postgraduate opportunities locally and partner with talented locals who have the emotional commitment for leading new enterprises to financial sustainability. One caution: Readers with serious snake phobias may have to fast-forward a couple of pages here and there.
Loaded with lesser-known multicultural tidbits, this account of a family’s adventures proves engaging, gritty, and buoyant.Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5456-5721-8
Page Count: 426
Publisher: North Loop Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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