An admirable account that will be of special interest to those keeping their eyes on the Middle East.
Iranian jurist and attorney Ebadi, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, recounts a life of commitment to human rights in the face of tyranny.
Ebadi (with Time Islamic affairs correspondent Moaveni) wasn’t well known outside Iran when she won the Nobel, but she was renowned within the country for fighting for women’s rights. Too, she had recently turned up evidence that the Islamic Republic had been murdering intellectual critics of the regime “in the name of God.” The roving hit squads, most of whose members “were low-ranking functionaries of the Ministry of Intelligence,” had knifed or strangled dozens of victims by 2000, when Ebadi discovered her name on the list, about the time she was briefly imprisoned as an object lesson in what happens to those who question the regime. It was not the first time Ebadi, born into an influential family that fell on hard times under the Shah’s rule, had been in trouble with the law. Appointed a judge at 23, she was removed from office when the mullahs came to power; she recounts a meeting with Fathollah Bani-Sadr, who would rise to prominence in the Islamist regime, and who “suggested” that she veil herself in deference to “our beloved Imam Khomeini, who has graced Iran with his return.” The suggestion did not take, though many of her colleagues adapted quickly to the new government, just as, she observes, they did when Mossadegh was assassinated and the Shah took control. Steadfast in her commitment to democratic reform, Ebadi closes by praising her daughter’s generation for defying the “morals police” and pressing for civil rights, and she declares that “the [Bush administration’s] threat of regime change by military force . . . endangers nearly all of the efforts democracy-minded Iranians have made in these recent years.”
An admirable account that will be of special interest to those keeping their eyes on the Middle East.Pub Date: May 9, 2006
ISBN: 1-4000-6470-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2006
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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