Far more of a human and social portrait than a medical text, this reissue fills the prescription for fascinating reading.
In this revised version of his 1935 autobiography, Morris, the author of 10 nonfiction books (Hopkins Pond and other sketches, 1896, etc.) writes about his career during a transformative age when medicine moved from horror to hospital.
Some things were better back in the good old days; not medicine. Morris, a renowned physician and surgeon in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, maintained a career that saw important medical developments: the introduction of Joseph Lister’s pioneering antiseptic procedures, for instance, and the use of anesthesia becoming commonplace during surgery. It’s hard to imagine that surgeons once treasured the rancid smell of that “good old surgical stink” produced by dried blood and pus. They operated in ordinary frock coats and, Morris recalls, wiped their knives across their boots to clean them before cutting into a patient. Operations were commonly done at a person’s home and as quickly as possible since without anesthesia the patient couldn’t survive the agony of an extended cutting session. Over the course of Morris’ career, hospitals became germ-free centers of healing rather than foul prisons for the insane and enfeebled. Written in a wry, self-deprecating style, Morris’ accessible, entertaining book is punctuated by examples and stories. It works on another level, too, as a peek into an achingly beautiful America now gone, when seemingly everyone in New York City knew each other, and the countryside beyond cities was filled with streams, woods and wild game. When it first appeared in 1935, Morris’ book was a best-seller; this revision from Gosden and Walker (Morris’ granddaughter) could easily do the same. It presents a multifaceted portrait: a conscientious, dedicated physician who refuses to accept a fee if he’s unsuccessful; a profession shrugging off the chains of ignorant tradition for the sterile coat of science; and a fertile country destroyed by frenzied building and avarice. Considering the current mess of health care and environmental decline, readers will weep for time passed.
Far more of a human and social portrait than a medical text, this reissue fills the prescription for fascinating reading.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2013
ISBN: 978-0989719902
Page Count: 370
Publisher: Jamestowne Bookworks
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An extraordinary true tale of torment, retribution, and loyalty that's irresistibly readable in spite of its intrusively melodramatic prose. Starting out with calculated, movie-ready anecdotes about his boyhood gang, Carcaterra's memoir takes a hairpin turn into horror and then changes tack once more to relate grippingly what must be one of the most outrageous confidence schemes ever perpetrated. Growing up in New York's Hell's Kitchen in the 1960s, former New York Daily News reporter Carcaterra (A Safe Place, 1993) had three close friends with whom he played stickball, bedeviled nuns, and ran errands for the neighborhood Mob boss. All this is recalled through a dripping mist of nostalgia; the streetcorner banter is as stilted and coy as a late Bowery Boys film. But a third of the way in, the story suddenly takes off: In 1967 the four friends seriously injured a man when they more or less unintentionally rolled a hot-dog cart down the steps of a subway entrance. The boys, aged 11 to 14, were packed off to an upstate New York reformatory so brutal it makes Sing Sing sound like Sunnybrook Farm. The guards continually raped and beat them, at one point tossing all of them into solitary confinement, where rats gnawed at their wounds and the menu consisted of oatmeal soaked in urine. Two of Carcaterra's friends were dehumanized by their year upstate, eventually becoming prominent gangsters. In 1980, they happened upon the former guard who had been their principal torturer and shot him dead. The book's stunning denouement concerns the successful plot devised by the author and his third friend, now a Manhattan assistant DA, to free the two killers and to exact revenge against the remaining ex-guards who had scarred their lives so irrevocably. Carcaterra has run a moral and emotional gauntlet, and the resulting book, despite its flaws, is disturbing and hard to forget. (Film rights to Propaganda; author tour)
Pub Date: July 10, 1995
ISBN: 0-345-39606-5
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A superb book about doing his job by a master of his craft.
The renowned writer offers advice on information-gathering and nonfiction composition.
The book consists of eight instructive and charming essays about creating narratives, all of them originally composed for the New Yorker, where McPhee (Silk Parachute, 2010, etc.) has been a contributor since the mid-1960s. Reading them consecutively in one volume constitutes a master class in writing, as the author clearly demonstrates why he has taught so successfully part-time for decades at Princeton University. In one of the essays, McPhee focuses on the personalities and skills of editors and publishers for whom he has worked, and his descriptions of those men and women are insightful and delightful. The main personality throughout the collection, though, is McPhee himself. He is frequently self-deprecating, occasionally openly proud of his accomplishments, and never boring. In his magazine articles and the books resulting from them, McPhee rarely injects himself except superficially. Within these essays, he offers a departure by revealing quite a bit about his journalism, his teaching life, and daughters, two of whom write professionally. Throughout the collection, there emerge passages of sly, subtle humor, a quality often absent in McPhee’s lengthy magazine pieces. Since some subjects are so weighty—especially those dealing with geology—the writing can seem dry. There is no dry prose here, however. Almost every sentence sparkles, with wordplay evident throughout. Another bonus is the detailed explanation of how McPhee decided to tackle certain topics and then how he chose to structure the resulting pieces. Readers already familiar with the author’s masterpieces—e.g., Levels of the Game, Encounters with the Archdruid, Looking for a Ship, Uncommon Carriers, Oranges, and Coming into the Country—will feel especially fulfilled by McPhee’s discussions of the specifics from his many books.
A superb book about doing his job by a master of his craft.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-374-14274-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 8, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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