Emling effectively shows her subject’s “extraordinary feats” as well as the immense difficulties facing those involved in...
A biography of “the dashing Swedish diplomat who dared to breach Hitler’s inner circle during the waning days of World War II.”
Emling (Setting the World on Fire: The Brief Astonishing Life of St. Catherine of Siena, 2016), a senior editor at AARP.org, introduces us to Folke Bernadotte (1895-1948), a member of the Swedish royal family who was in a unique position to promote humanitarian projects throughout his long career. Health problems derailed his military career, but he maintained an interest in diplomacy. He represented Sweden’s king at Chicago’s Century of Progress Exposition in 1933 and served as Swedish commissioner general for the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Later, he became vice president of the Swedish Red Cross. Though Sweden had practiced active neutrality since the 1920s, that stance was growing increasingly difficult to maintain in the face of rampant German aggression. In the spring of 1943, word leaked that Germany planned to round up and deport all the Jews in Denmark, and Danish physicist Niels Bohr convinced the king to allow the Jews into Sweden. Over the course of two weeks, fishermen ferried 8,000 to safety. Bernadotte was responsible for the first prisoner exchange between the Allies and Germany, a massive effort that benefitted thousands of POWs. With the end of the war looming, German prisoners were being quickly exterminated. Heinrich Himmler knew the war was lost, and Bernadotte convinced him to let Scandinavian prisoners be removed to a camp near Denmark. Himmler also hoped Bernadotte would carry a capitulation offer to Dwight Eisenhower. In March 1945, Bernadotte’s “White Buses,” under strict German control, retrieved prisoners from a series of camps. In April, Himmler finally said he could evacuate any prisoners he liked. Added to the white buses were more than 7,000 women from Ravensbrück.
Emling effectively shows her subject’s “extraordinary feats” as well as the immense difficulties facing those involved in humanitarian work during World War II.Pub Date: May 21, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-77041-449-5
Page Count: 280
Publisher: ECW Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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