A well-written book for lovers of book publishing and supporters of human rights.
Former Random House President Bernstein gives a fascinating history of publishing in the 20th century and traces the beginnings of the human rights movement.
The author’s stories of beginning at Simon & Schuster after World War II as office boy “in waiting,” working his way up into the sales department, and working on the Little Golden Books all vividly illustrate corporate life in the publishing industry. During that time, he was fortunate to meet Kay Thompson, who was looking for someone to promote a new line of Eloise merchandise to accompany her bestselling books. It did so well that, after being fired from Simon & Schuster, Bernstein continued promoting Eloise. In a perfect example of the importance of networking and knowing people, the owner of Books, Inc. in San Francisco mentioned Bernstein to Bennett Cerf, owner of Random House, who hired him in 1956. Thompson went with him, and he became her literary agent. As he notes, children’s books fueled his career. He began with a book of stories linked to Shirley Temple’s TV show and worked for years with Dr. Seuss. Within a decade, he was president of the company. He continued Cerf’s publishing philosophy to print books because they were important, even if they weren’t big sellers, and Cerf’s legacy taught Bernstein to hire and delegate and to “beware of articulate incompetents.” Without his high-profile position at Random House, he might not have been invited to Moscow in 1970, where he was exposed to the Soviet dissident movement, then in its infancy. From then on, the author was active in many organizations related to human rights, including the Association of American Publishers, the Fund for Free Expression, the International Freedom to Publish Commission, and as chair of Human Rights Watch. The Helsinki Final Act of 1975 helped hatch the Helsinki Watch and America’s Watch, eventually covering the Middle East, China, and Africa; Bernstein was there for it all.
A well-written book for lovers of book publishing and supporters of human rights.Pub Date: April 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62097-171-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2016
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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