Lively and well told.
Colorful biography of a geologist who surveyed much of the American West in the mid-19th century.
Wilson, editor of The American Scholar, begins by showing King (1842–1901) in the 1880s, when Henry Adams's circle admired him not only as a man of action but as a brilliant mind and a ready wit. The orphaned son of a New England trading family, King attended Yale's Sheffield Scientific School, where he excelled in geology, the most prestigious science of the era. After the outbreak of the Civil War, King headed west and soon found a job with the California Geological Survey, headed by Josiah Whitney, a friend of his Sheffield professors. There the King legend began, as he scaled unclimbed mountains, gathered mineral specimens and accumulated an impressive list of adventures—a fair number of which Wilson shows to be tall tales. But King's experience led to a job as director of the Fortieth Parallel Survey, charting the territory between California and the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains, in Colorado. This section of the country was important both as a route for the first continental rail lines, and as a possible repository of valuable mineral deposits. Here for the first time, King was leader of an exploration, dependent on the efforts of his team to secure results; while the survey was two years late in finishing, the geological work was some of the most significant of its time. At the end of the survey, King exposed a pair of hoaxers who had conned several wealthy men into investing in a fraudulent diamond mine. At this point the story ends—with King clearly depicted against the background of his time, and his place in 19th-century science firmly established.
Lively and well told.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2006
ISBN: 0-7432-6025-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2005
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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