A welcome update from an irrepressible iconoclast who prides himself on “effervescence, cheekiness and great service.”
A sequel to the business magnate’s 1998 bestseller, Losing My Virginity.
Branson (The Virgin Way: Everything I Know About Leadership, 2014, etc.) describes his rise in the past two decades as a global entrepreneur whose Virgin Group brand now controls more than 400 companies in sectors ranging from media and entertainment to travel and financial services. His brisk narrative celebrates life as “one big adventure,” offering vivid scenes of his personal life, his colorful, often irreverent business practices, and his wide-ranging philanthropy to advance health, help the environment, and stop the exploitation of children. “I do most things on emotion,” he writes, allowing that his risks are calculated and managed by carefully selected staff. Much of the book details the deals behind his work in space flight and other areas, where he brings “passion, know-how and determination” to bear on his disruption of existing industries. A man who prizes humor, Branson recounts many of his publicity antics, from dangling from a crane in Times Square to hiding in overhead baggage compartments on Virgin aircraft, lowering himself to ask boarding passengers if he can be of service. He deems entrepreneurship, which he encourages in many forums, to be “our natural state…like playfulness,” and his many stories of vetting new business ideas, learning the lay of the land, and acting decisively illustrate how he has been pursuing that life since founding Student magazine at age 16. His work with The Elders, a group of leaders working to solve global conflicts, begun by Branson, Nelson Mandela, and others, underscores his keen interest in humanitarian work. The author also provides revealing anecdotes about Paul Allen, Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Kate Moss, Donald Trump, Al Gore, Rupert Murdoch, and others.
A welcome update from an irrepressible iconoclast who prides himself on “effervescence, cheekiness and great service.”Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7352-1942-7
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2017
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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