A clear and concise memoir of introspection, though Cohen’s journalistic approach may not provide abundant hope for readers.
A longtime multiple sclerosis patient seeks the meaning of hope.
For four decades, award-winning journalist Cohen (Strong at the Broken Places: Voices of Illness, a Chorus of Hope, 2008, etc.) has lived with multiple sclerosis, a condition shared by his father and grandmother that has left him legally blind and with impaired movement. Through the years, the author has found many ways to cope with his condition (not to mention with two bouts of cancer), but he rarely thought of himself as having “hope.” An invitation to participate in stem cell research changed that. Throughout the book, Cohen touches on a variety of important themes, including how to live with chronic health conditions and the advancement of genetic treatments for such conditions. However, it is mainly a retelling of his own story, a means for catharsis. The author interviewed his children about their memories of him during their childhoods, during which he was prone to intense anger. The lack of any meaningful treatments for MS, as well as the lack of caring physicians, left Cohen with little to anticipate aside from a slowly degrading body. Meeting Dr. Saud Sadiq, however, forced him to look at his future anew. A pioneer in stem cell research for MS and a physician intensely committed to his patients, Sadiq allowed Cohen to experience not only hope for his own condition, but also encouragement that his suffering had not been in vain, that his treatment might lead the way to help for others. A committed nonbeliever, Cohen makes it clear that while many find hope in God—in one form or another—he does not. “For me, belief in the power of hope is linked to belief in the self.” Moreover, ties of family and friendship give people the very reason to hope. “Hope is a gift from us to us,” writes the author.
A clear and concise memoir of introspection, though Cohen’s journalistic approach may not provide abundant hope for readers.Pub Date: May 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-57525-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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