A respectful and thoughtfully documented history of the British monarch but not the definitive biography one might hope for.
A portrait of Queen Elizabeth II (b. 1926) that highlights her many accomplishments.
As the longest-reigning monarch in British history, Elizabeth II is currently more beloved than ever. Recent acclaimed dramas such as the 2006 film The Queen and the hit Netflix series The Crown have further sparked our universal fascination, as each work has delved into Elizabeth’s more private life and aimed to reveal a woman with complex ambitions and passions. Daily Mail writer Hardman, who has written extensively on the British monarchy (Our Queen, 2011, etc.), approached this book alongside his current TV documentary. While not exactly serving as a companion book to the series, both vehicles assert a similar reverential approach to the material, choosing to elude the more personal dramas that have beset the royal family and focusing instead on the queen’s tireless work ethic and long-standing dedication to her role. Hardman examines the broader areas of accomplishment that have been particularly significant during her reign. “By any measure,” writes the author, “her life and reign comprise a vault of experience unrivaled by any world leader. It is one of the reasons that even those who are not royalists by inclination applaud her dedication to duty.” Rather than providing a linear account, Hardman looks at particular topics: the queen’s diplomatic accomplishments throughout the Commonwealth as well as Africa, Europe, and the U.S; her associations with various leaders, including her line of prime ministers and her close rapport with accomplished statesmen such as Nelson Mandela and the many American presidents who have come into power during her reign. “There can be few people in the USA, let alone the rest of the world, who have lived through the administrations of sixteen presidents—more than one-third of the total,” writes Hardman. The book is grounded in lucid historical detail and often highlighted by colorful anecdotes. However, as a full biography, the dense volume, while accessible, lacks an engrossing throughline to maintain lengthy reader engagement.
A respectful and thoughtfully documented history of the British monarch but not the definitive biography one might hope for.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64313-002-6
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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
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