A quick, smoothly readable account of Lincoln the political striver, the embodiment of the Declaration’s “central idea…that...
The editor of the National Review sketches the political character of our 16th president.
Ever since his assassination and swift elevation to the pantheon of our greatest presidents, “getting right with Lincoln,” in the memorable phrase of one historian, has been the business of our mainstream politicians. As they grope to align themselves with Lincoln’s legacy, unembarrassed by any “ideological body snatching,” much mischief ensues. To discover what Lincoln truly believed, Lowry (Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years, 2009, etc.) confines himself largely to Lincoln's pre-presidential career, explaining how the backwoods boy of little schooling and negligible property early on identified with the Whigs rather than the Jacksonian Democrats who captured so many of his similarly situated peers. The Rail-Splitter, he argues, is best understood not as a man of the axe but of the book, not so much by his origins as by his aspirations. For the deeply ambitious Lincoln, enhancing opportunity was the animating principle of his politics, and he committed himself to a program of uplift and improvement that offered the best chance for his fellow citizens to transcend their upbringings. Personally, Lincoln avoided most vices, and he preached and exemplified the habits of self-control, rationality and industriousness. Politically, he elevated the value of work, held property sacrosanct and looked to the Founding Fathers as a guide for renewing an American spirit gone flabby. Lowry sets out Lincoln’s platform: enthusiastic support for economic growth, internal improvements, new technologies, education and a sound national banking system; a profound respect for our constitutional system and free institutions; and a refusal to engage in class warfare, to sentimentalize agrarianism or to denigrate achievement. Some readers are bound to accuse Lowry of nudging Lincoln into the author’s own preferred categories of belief, but they’ll be hard-pressed to find any violation of the historical record.
A quick, smoothly readable account of Lincoln the political striver, the embodiment of the Declaration’s “central idea…that every man can make himself.”Pub Date: June 11, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-212378-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Broadside Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2013
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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