An intimate, richly detailed portrait of a powerful political figure.
The formative experiences that shaped a political mind.
John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) began keeping a diary when he was 11 years old, a project that resulted in tens of thousands of pages. To produce this perceptive biography, Levin (Edith and Woodrow: The Wilson White House, 2001, etc.) has judiciously mined that abundant material, along with Adams’ prolific correspondence and his wife’s memoirs. Although considered by contemporaries “a frigid and icy New Englander,” Adams, as the author portrays him, was a passionate man, often lonely, self-critical and exacting of others (Thomas Jefferson, for one, who seemed to Adams shifty and calculating). Besides revealing his emotions and intellectual growth, his diary offers a vivid record of the tumultuous political events that he witnessed, including the American Revolution, Louisiana Purchase and Napoleon’s doomed invasion of Russia. Adams made his first trip to Europe in 1778, as his father’s companion and secretary, and at age 14, he accompanied Ambassador Francis Dana to Russia, interpreting peace negotiations conducted in French. By the time Adams enrolled at Harvard, he was a worldly young man but had no clear direction. Following his father’s advice, he began a legal apprenticeship in the small town of Newburyport, where, isolated and anxious about his future, he plummeted into overwhelming depression—an affliction that would recur throughout his life. His parents, the estimable John and Abigail, had high hopes for their son. If he achieved anything less than professional prominence, they told him, “it will be owing to your own laziness, slovenliness, and obstinacy.” As a minister to The Hague, London, Prussia and Russia, senator from Massachusetts, secretary of state under James Monroe and professor of rhetoric at Harvard, Adams had no lack of achievement and honors. Levin focuses on his education—as a lawyer, statesman, husband and father—ending in 1815, with major roles yet before him.
An intimate, richly detailed portrait of a powerful political figure.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-1137279620
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
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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