The real story here is the idealistic work of Muriel, Doris and Nellie as they fought for universal justice and economic...
Muriel Lester (1885-1968) was one of the best-known faces of the 20th century’s global peace movement. Koven (History/Rutgers Univ.; Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London, 2004) explains her strong connection to London’s East End through her friend, orphan Nellie Dowell.
It was Nellie who opened doors and taught Muriel the best way to help the poor of Bow and Poplar. Muriel and Nellie worked together to recast Victorian values and reimagine gender and class. Muriel based her social justice brand of Christianity on Tolstoy’s interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount. Muriel and her sister, Doris, fully supported by their wealthy father, moved to Bromley by Bow in 1912 and established Kingsley House in 1915. There, they provided Bible classes, a Montessori school, an adult school for men, a baby clinic and an alcohol-free pub. They lived next door to Nellie and her mother, though the author has no record of when they met. Nellie spent five years of her childhood in a Poor Law school before she became a match factory girl. She was valued and sent first to Wellington, New Zealand, and then to Sweden to teach workers the company’s methods. However, her years of poverty and recurring bouts of rheumatic fever shortened her career and her life. Illness plagued both women, and Muriel insisted her “Prayer of Relaxation” enabled her recovery from a breakdown in 1916. Nellie served Muriel faithfully, and her letters show how she wished for an exclusive friendship. The author dwells excessively on the question of whether these two women were lesbians or chaste romantic friends.
The real story here is the idealistic work of Muriel, Doris and Nellie as they fought for universal justice and economic equality. Koven demonstrates how these women changed the world’s attitude toward the poor.Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2015
ISBN: 978-0691158501
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
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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