A thorough, timely biography of the man likely to become king in the next decade or so.
A sympathetic psychological study of the prince who has been working tirelessly all his life to be taken seriously.
Having written previously on other members of the modern English dynasty (Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch, 2012, etc.), British biographer Smith provides plenty of astute observations in her biography of the Prince of Wales, who is now 68. His 90-year-old mother, Queen Elizabeth II, is finally slowing down and deputizing some of her tasks to her eldest son, although she has no intention of abdicating. After espousing vociferously and often controversially throughout his life on causes he is passionate about—organic farming and other environmental issues, traditional architecture versus modern, creating opportunity and education for disadvantaged youth, alternative medicine and homeopathy, among many others—Charles seems to be toning down his rhetoric in preparation for the establishment of a more disciplined tone, à la his efficient, well-loved mother. Smith is not the first biographer to depict the young prince as love-starved, lonely, and emotionally vulnerable, although her portrait is enormously touching and supported by wide-ranging interviews and research. Elizabeth’s hands-off approach to child-raising, Charles’ father’s bullying, the hypercriticism of the press, and his position of impotence within the royal succession all colluded in pushing him into a disastrous first marriage with a far-too-young, inexperienced, and emotionally damaged soul, Diana Spencer. In fact, he always loved and needed the one woman who bolstered his confidence, listened to him, and shared his pursuits, the married Camilla Parker-Bowles. Indeed, Smith portrays Camilla in a very generous light and Diana as seriously psychologically impaired. Throughout, the author traces the roots of Charles’ many fascinating and beneficial "obsessions"; he was a prescient prince who scorned the playboy label and tried valiantly to do something good with his wealth and connections.
A thorough, timely biography of the man likely to become king in the next decade or so.Pub Date: April 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6790-9
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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