Meticulous research and capacious imagination inform this absorbing tale of genius, personality, and the vagaries of...
The incredibly cluttered and productive life of the cantankerous wizard who vied with Newton and with history, losing both struggles until very recently.
With the near-simultaneous publication of two full-length biographies (Lisa Jardine’s The Curious Life of Robert Hooke, Feb. 2004), Hooke’s reputation appears to have been restored. While researching A History of London (1999), Inwood became convinced that Hooke (1635–1703) had been unjustly treated by historians, who tended to portray him as irascible and arrogant. He may have claimed to have invented or discovered virtually every scientific device and principle in the 17th century, the biographer concedes, but his actual achievements were almost as astonishing. A gifted inventor of both grand and risible creations, an architect and builder who shared with Christopher Wren the responsibilities for rebuilding London after the Great Fire, teacher, coffee house raconteur, astronomer, microscopist, cometographer, dissector, vivisector, artist—all these hats and more Hooke wore, most with enormous distinction. Like Jardine, Inwood contends that Hooke attempted to keep so many balls in the air that he lost track and was beaned by a few. He was inadequate as secretary of the Royal Society, and his unprepossessing appearance and crusty demeanor alienated some important contemporaries who would subsequently drive the sharpest nails in the coffin of his reputation. Inwood does a remarkable job of explaining in (sometimes excessive) detail the myriad experiments and demonstrations Hooke prepared for the Royal Society and for his lectures at London’s Gresham College. He also excels in his Hooke-ian attempt to keep multiple narrative threads in the balance, endeavoring to show us the days and weeks with all their myriad activities rather than focusing in turn on, say, Hooke’s inventions, his architecture, his coffee housing, his sex life (Hooke had an ongoing sexual relationship with his niece).
Meticulous research and capacious imagination inform this absorbing tale of genius, personality, and the vagaries of reputation. (16 pp. b&w illustrations)Pub Date: April 19, 2004
ISBN: 1-931561-56-7
Page Count: 500
Publisher: MacAdam/Cage
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2004
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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