A swashbuckling book that is likely to elicit extreme reactions of applause or disapproval depending on the reader’s...
A retired New York Police Department detective relates the saga of his adolescence in New York City, his chance decision to join the force, his storied career (1970-1984), and the serious injury that forced his retirement.
Written with former NYPD officer and Army machine-gunner Picciarelli (co-author: Undercover Cop: How I Brought Down the Real-Life Sopranos, 2013, etc.), this anecdote-driven, loosely organized memoir celebrates what most cops might consider “the good old days” but what some civilians might consider a celebration of excessive force. Friedman used his fists, guns, and other available weapons to arrest, wound, and sometimes kill suspects, winning a host of medals for valor in the process. Although the memoir contains sporadic reflections on whether Friedman needed to use deadly force as often as he did, the book largely consists of unreflective war stories about New York’s perpetual criminal element, especially in neighborhoods dominated by nonwhite populations. The author does not worry about political correctness, stereotyping, or reliance on stylistic clichés. His empathy for fellow police officers wounded or killed on the job is boundless—not so for most others in the narrative. Much of Friedman’s commentary involves his desired assignment in the city’s 41st Precinct, a small area of the South Bronx sometimes referred to as “Fort Apache.” Readers can only wonder how Friedman would have fared in today’s climate of police officers wearing body cameras and vehicle dashboard cameras to document on-the-job conduct and citizens using phone cameras to record law enforcement personnel. When not on the street making arrests, Friedman chafed at completing paperwork and milling around courthouses waiting to testify. His restlessness for action never abated, to the point where he placed himself in personal peril multiple times.
A swashbuckling book that is likely to elicit extreme reactions of applause or disapproval depending on the reader’s personal opinions about law enforcement.Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-10690-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2017
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
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
