While it needs more polish, Woods’ life story is still a memorable autobiography of a remarkable, self-made man.
In his memoir, Woods provides enough fodder for three books in this account of his experiences as a boy, businessman, and cross-country walker.
The author begins with a frank look at his impoverished childhood during the late 1930s and ’40s and includes a bleak portrait of an alcoholic father—“I have no positive or personal childhood memories of my father that made me feel connected to him”—whom he initially planned to murder but later viewed “as a pitiful individual, a completely humiliated man.” When he was 11, Woods was sent to live with 68-year-old Grandpa Huber, where he endured a harsh farm life until 16. The stories of childhood adversity lead the reader to marvel at the kind of backbreaking work asked of children at the time. As an adult, he used his strong work ethic in various startups—insurance agency, construction company, flea market, flight school—some successful, others huge busts. In 2004, he walked east to west across America to inspire his countrymen to “become participants in molding our country,” which Woods believed needed an “overhaul of morals.” In 2010, he did it again—this time north to south to promote fitness. The story of the first walk is highly entertaining. (The second walk’s account feels a little rushed, though it redeems itself with his experience on “Oprah.”) If you’ve ever seen the news coverage of these walkers and wondered how they do it (23.31 miles a day on average, five pairs of 991 New Balance shoes) or what it’s really like on the road, you’ll enjoy Woods’ story. However, the memoir—Woods’ first book—suffers from clunky prose and too many dull details.
While it needs more polish, Woods’ life story is still a memorable autobiography of a remarkable, self-made man.Pub Date: April 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1504901758
Page Count: 310
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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