A veteran sportswriter (Matty, 1993, etc.) goes a bit afield with still another biography of all-star entertainer Will Rogers. He was simply a natural. With his vaunted wit, Rogers (18791935) conquered stage, screen, print, airwaves—just about every available medium of communication, with the possible exception of semaphore. The genial, lariat-twirling philosopher roped in everyone from Flo Ziegfeld to FDR with sly winks and pungent topical observations. Rogers played the quintessential American (that is, himself) to perfection. Using basic pop history, starting with Hernando de Soto, the Trail of Tears, and the Civil War, Robinson quickly sketches Rogers's progenitors, some of whom would now be called Native Americans, and his progress from the Indian Territory that became Oklahoma to world traveler and national icon. We learn that Rogers, though often seasick, was a reckless air passenger (which led, of course, to the ultimate tragedy). There are extensive quotations from his unlettered and remarkably inept, unfunny letters of courtship and a gathering of opinion from fellow actors. Withal, the text too often seems to be an amalgam of random recollections, a few odd facts, and secondary source material. There is little new and revealing about the man that urgently demands another biography after Ben Yagoda's masterful 1993 work. Clearly, Rogers was usually a man of remarkable native intelligence and wit. What caused him, then, to offer words in support of Huey Long, Benito Mussolini, and Father Coughlin? Robinson doesn't enlighten us; the most natural and open of performers remains an enigma as a man. Appended are several pages of Rogers's gags, but no index, filmography, bibliography, or notes. A serviceable account of a famous American, but not a prime example of the biographers' art. (30 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: May 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-19-508693-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1996
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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