A capable Revolutionary War history that breaks no new ground.
Bancroft Prize winner Middlekauff (Emeritus, American History/Univ. of California; Benjamin Franklin and His Enemies, 1996, etc.) sets out to chart the evolution of George Washington's viewpoint during the crucible of the Revolutionary War.
"At its beginning, [Washington] was a provincial," writes the author, "and during its course he became an American. But he was a most unusual American by war's end: He was an established citizen of the world." Although an engaging concept, the author's thesis proves to be unsupported by the text. Washington certainly thought of himself primarily as a Virginian, but Middlekauff demonstrates that as early as 1775, he "wished in effect to erase state lines…to banish provincialism in favor of unity," at least within the army. While Washington recognized that French support was indispensable to American victory and thus made great efforts to flatter and cajole French commanders into serving his purposes, nothing appears to suggest that Washington was then considering the place of an independent America among the world's nations or was otherwise adopting a broadly internationalist viewpoint officially or personally. Middlekauff delivers a comprehensive if uncritical review of the war in the theaters in which Washington exercised day-to-day command. His ability to form and reform a perpetually dissolving army in the face of appalling privation made him indispensable to the cause, and the author emphasizes his consistent adherence to the principle of civilian control of the military, an attitude critical to the subsequent development of the republic. But Middlekauff offers few glimpses into the character of Washington as a fallible mortal with an evolving perspective; the image of him that predominates is the familiar one of the austere warrior, "a man set above all others, a unique being—not a god, but at the least a chosen instrument of Providence."
A capable Revolutionary War history that breaks no new ground.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-87423-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
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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