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HOW GOLF EXPLAINS TRUMP

Since Reilly takes golf more seriously than politics, making “golf terrible again” is the worst sin of all, but it’s one...

How golf explains life and reveals character, particularly when the golfer under consideration is Donald Trump.

Renowned sports columnist Reilly (Tiger, Meet My Sister...: And Other Things I Probably Shouldn't Have Said, 2014, etc.) has known the president for 30 years, from back when he was a star columnist for Sports Illustrated and Trump called him “my favorite writer!” He would often embellish, introducing the journalist to strangers as the president or publisher of SI. Being with Trump back then was “like spending the day in a hyperbole hurricane.” If Reilly was once a Trump favorite, he no longer will be, and it will be interesting to see if Trump responds to—or even acknowledges—this book. One of the revelations is that a large percentage of Trump’s more caustic tweets have actually come from a guy initially employed as his caddy. This is a book about how Trump lies and cheats constantly, qualities that may come with the territory in his newfound field of politics but which the author believes have no place in the gentlemanly sport of golf. Trump lies about his handicap, about the quality and reputation of his courses, about the profitability or lack thereof of these operations, and even about how much he actually plays. He is apparently “on a pace to play almost triple the amount of golf Obama played,” though he frequently criticized his predecessor for playing so often. He cheats on his score, his putts, and the lies of his shots, which miraculously make their way from the rough or even the water onto the fairway. “You can think Trump has made America great again,” writes Reilly at the conclusion of his amusing, entertaining assessment of a congenital liar. “You can think Trump has made America hate again. But there’s one thing I know: He’s made golf terrible again.”

Since Reilly takes golf more seriously than politics, making “golf terrible again” is the worst sin of all, but it’s one that explains so many others.

Pub Date: April 2, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-316-52808-5

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Hachette

Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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

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WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR

A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...

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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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