Pulitzer Prizewinning author Massie, whose 1967 Nicholas and Alexandra received high praise, has used new documents on the assassination of the Romanovs to write a sequel that is almost as much thriller as historical account. Beginning with the assassination in the basement of the house in which the royal family had been imprisoned in Ekaterinburg, Massie traces the early, covert efforts, mainly by geologist Alexander Avdonin, to find the bodies. In 1979, Avdonin and Moscow television producer Geli Ryabov used an account of the execution given them by the son of the executioner to find the grave site and exhumed the bodies. In 1989, news of this discovery set off a scramble among the local authorities, Moscow, and competing groups of forensic analysts in the West to study the remains of the Romanovs. These efforts led to the identification of the bodies of Tsarina Alexandra and three of the four daughters, with disagreement as to whether Marie or Anastasia was the missing daughter. The identity of the tsar himself was complicated by an unusual genetic anomaly that could have been caused by contamination. The results were also contested by ÇmigrÇ groups abroad, who suspected a KGB hoax, and were entangled by disputes as to the missing members of the family. One of the most fascinating parts of Massie's story is his account of the controversy surrounding ``Anna Anderson,'' acknowledged by many of the Romanovs as Anastasia, but proved in recent DNA testing to have been ``an impostor with astonishing physical similarities'' to the dead princess. Finally, Massie deals with the bitter squabble among surviving members of the family about ``who is and is not qualified to claim a nonexistent throne.'' (For more on the assassination, see Mark D. Steinberg and Vladimir M. Khrustalâv, The Fall of the Romanovs, p. 1264.) With memorable sketches of the main participants and a skillful discussion of the scientific evidence, Massie pulls together a sprawling theme and infuses it with quiet drama. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-394-58048-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1995
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
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
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