A vigorous biography (the second this year: see Edwin M. Yoder Jr.'s Joe Alsop's Cold War, p. 156) of the brothers whose journalistic opinion shaped American foreign policy through much of the Cold War. Writing in journals like the Saturday Evening Post, the New York Herald Tribune, and especially Newsweek, Joseph (191089) and Stewart (191474) Alsop espoused militant anticommunism and a robust vision of America as the world's one rightful superpower. They grew up among affluent bluebloods who would advise America's postwar leaders, and they had unprecedented access to presidents from Truman to Carter. Under the Kennedy administration the Alsops reached their zenith as shapers of opinion, offering the president their views on sweeping matters of state and translating Kennedy's aims for their readers. Joseph, the better known of the two, was ``an aristocrat with aristocratic tastes and an aristocratic bearing,'' and also a world-traveling ``shoe-leather reporter.'' Stewart was the more analytical, given to ``long expository pieces designed to lay bare the inner workings of government and the intricacies of major issues.'' Reaching millions of readers, this journalistic tag team redefined the role of the media in American politics, exerting an influence that Merry, executive editor of Congressional Quarterly Publications and former Wall Street Journal Washington correspondent, masterfully explores. (Those who complain that the so-called liberal news media enjoy too much power today ought to note that the way was paved by archconservatives.) But the Alsops were not mere cheerleaders for the power elite, Merry writes; they criticized several administrations for not confronting Russian and Chinese communist expansion more directly. And whereas both Alsops are remembered as hawks, Merry shows that the confusion of Vietnam caused them more than once to reconsider. In the aftermath of that fiasco, their faith in American power bowed but not broken, Joseph summed up their beliefs: ``Nothing endures, because there is always change, and there is always war.'' An important and thoroughly well written addition to the literature on ``the American century.'' (16 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-670-83868-3
Page Count: 672
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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