A nicely rounded literary study of an intrepid explorer undone by the cultural biases of the time.
A spirited reconstruction of the arduous five-year trek into Central Africa by Heinrich Barth (1821–1865), a German scientist exploring for England.
Kemper (Reinventing the Wheel: A Story of Genius, Innovation, and Grand Ambition, 2005, etc.) ably renders the intensive research involved in delineating Barth’s life and travels into an engaging narrative. The arrogant, introspective Barth had recently completed his dissertation, learned Arabic and written his travelogue, Wanderings Along the Shores of the Mediterranean, when he was referred to James Richardson, avid English abolitionist and missionary, for his expedition into Central Africa in 1850. Sponsored by Lord Palmerston, then head of the British Foreign Office, the trip was ostensibly commercial, to “make treaties with African potentates,” as well as to spread English civilization and Christianity—the explorers before them had perished by disease and violence. Enduring appalling conditions, such as fever, the deaths of Richardson and other comrades, theft by his Arab guides and especially the lack of funds from England (due to the great lapse in travel time), Barth and his cumbersome camel-laden entourage trekked from Tripoli south through the Sahara. He had to placate the suspicious, murderous Arab chiefs along the way, bribing them with whatever he had, and often being held captive for months. He took assiduous notes about the tribes, mingling with the natives and always asking questions. He discovered a tributary of the Niger, was stranded in Timbuktu and finally rode back to Tripoli in 1855. Back in England, his academic account, when finally published in 1857, was criticized for its tolerant account of the Arabs. With Europe “on the cusp of the imperial age,” his news from Africa was unwelcome.
A nicely rounded literary study of an intrepid explorer undone by the cultural biases of the time.Pub Date: June 25, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-393-07966-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2012
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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