Excellent on the music, sketchy on the life. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen)
An upbeat if limited biography of the great blues singer and guitarist.
Born McKinley A. Morganfield in 1913, he was raised on the Stovall plantation near Clarksdale, Mississippi, by a grandmother who nicknamed him Muddy. Music journalist and documentary filmmaker Gordon (It Came From Memphis, not reviewed) impresses with his portrait of Muddy's early years, seeming equally knowledgeable about Delta geography, sharecropping finances, and early bottleneck slides. Muddy picked cotton, trapped furs, and helped bootleggers by day while learning the blues at night from Son House and Robert Johnson. The text focuses on music, covering Muddy’s first marriage in one paragraph but devoting a complete chapter to his famous 1941 Fisk University/Library of Congress “folklore” recording. After Muddy moves to Chicago in 1943, this focus causes confusion; so many people play in his band (a showcase for talented members who often left to become headliners) or live in his large, friendly home that his personal life becomes a disconcerting blur. Playing street corners, house parties, and clubs like the Zanzibar, Muddy became a top blues man and attracted the finest musicians. His band was best as a quintet of two guitars, harmonica, drum, and piano, and it was most productive from 1947 to 1955, when the hits “Mannish Boy,” “Rolling Stone,” and “Hoochie Coochie Man” were recorded by the Chess brothers, Polish-Jewish immigrants who had expanded from nightclubs into the music business. The blues took a commercial hit from the rise of rock ’n’ roll in the mid-’50s, but popularity in Europe and at the Newport Jazz Festival (beginning in 1960) kept Muddy working, and he gradually became a revered elder statesman. In the ’70s, he played Carnegie Hall and the Carter White House, touring with Eric Clapton before cancer took his life in 1983.
Excellent on the music, sketchy on the life. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen)Pub Date: May 23, 2002
ISBN: 0-316-32849-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A thoughtful, well-presented argument about an issue many people face.
A doctor’s manifesto about terminally ill patients’ right to die.
While many Americans believe that the terminally ill should be able to choose to end their lives, the medical profession, the courts and the government mostly remain beholden to traditional and religious beliefs about the sanctity of life. Preston, a medical professor for more than 20 years, argues that it is time to re-evaluate those ethics in light of today’s technology and its ability to prolong life beyond its natural course. The author writes that confusion and misconception pervade most discussions about aid in dying. He distinguishes "patient-directed dying" or "aid in dying" from terms like "physician-assisted suicide” or "euthanasia." In his analysis, the word "suicide" should not apply to someone who is dying with no hope of recovery. Euthanasia, on the other hand, refers to someone other than the patient administering a lethal drug. Patient-directed dying is when a terminally ill individual is able to request and obtain a prescription for medication to end his or her life, under guidelines set to guard against abuse. Through four composite stories based on situations Preston has witnessed from counseling terminally ill patients and their families, he reveals the suffering caused by prohibitions against patient-directed dying. He adds that doctors must be more willing to care for patients when curing them is no longer possible, and recognize that exhausting every medical treatment, no matter how slim the chances of success, often just prolongs suffering. Preston states his case persuasively, illustrates the need for patient-directed dying as an option, counters arguments often made against it and suggests compromises to address concerns on both sides of the debate.
A thoughtful, well-presented argument about an issue many people face.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 1936
ISBN: 978-1-58348-461-2
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This competent biography of California senator Feinstein, who in November will be up for reelection, hews to the new archetype in political drama: It's the tale of the child who triumphs over the dysfunctions of family life and grows up to become an influential public figure. Roberts, editorial page editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, offers a tepid round-up of Feinstein's life and career. He sketches Feinstein's parents, a successful doctor and an abusive mother, and suggests that in childhood Feinstein learned to transform emotional pain into ambition. After Stanford, Dianne Goldman returned home to San Francisco in 1956, began learning politics, and eloped with lawyer Jack Berman. Divorced within three years, she raised a daughter, developed her political profile as a member of the state parole board for women, and found lasting love with neurosurgeon Bert Feinstein. In 1969, she won election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, casting her crusade—as throughout her career, the author notes aptly—``in terms that threatened neither men nor the status quo.'' Insecure and imperious, Democrat Feinstein gained a reputation as a ``paradoxical liberal'' (most notably by abandoning her opposition to the death penalty). In 1978 her husband died, San Francisco was rocked by the Jonestown tragedy, and Supervisor Dan White assassinated Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. Feinstein became acting mayor, and her stewardship lasted nine years, earning her a national reputation. She lost the 1990 race for governor to Pete Wilson but rebounded in 1992, when she was elected to fill out Wilson's uncompleted Senate term. She won on the strength of her campaign style, big spending, and the postAnita Hill ``Year of the Woman'' campaign of the Democratic National Committee. Though Feinstein once aspired to be president, she now says the Senate's high enough. Indeed, this book, though mainly respectful, should not garner her new acolytes. (8 pages b&w photos, not seen) ($50,000 ad/promo; author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-06-258508-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
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