An overlong but often riveting account of the life of perhaps the most compelling American Indian of this century. Means has never been far from controversy, and in this autobiography, written with Marvin Wolf (Family Blood: The True Story of the Yom Kippur Murders, 1993), he covers nearly all those he has been tangled up in. From his street-punk days in San Francisco and Los Angeles, to his time as an accountant and data processor, to his leadership in the militant American Indian Movement, to his current work as a film actor, Means recounts his nearly always interesting and complicated life. His memoir is action-packed, offering insider accounts of events like AIM's 71-day takeover of Wounded Knee in 1973, Means's near-constant barroom brawling, and his frequent brushes with death. Means interweaves the book with sometimes too much historical context from his family and tribal nation, the Oglala Lakota, and occasionally goes on at too much length about his opinions on subjects like the American educational system, but he also allows his best side to shine through, as father, son, and many-times husband. All in all, Means comes across as honesteven if at times he seems to take more credit than he deserves for various actions he was involved in (others in the drama, especially Indian leaders, will almost undoubtedly take Means to task on his characterizations of them). If nothing else, being able to get inside his head and understand his rationale for certain choices (like serving as pornographer Larry Flynt's running mate for the Republican presidential nomination) is worth the price of the book. Rarely reaches searing heat or soaring heights, but Means manages to sustain interest and energy throughout. (32 pages b&w photos, not seen) (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-13621-8
Page Count: 608
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1995
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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