With eloquent sobriety and restraint, this biography of the Dutch-Jewish thinker whom Bertrand Russell called “the most lovable of the philosophers” communicates much of its subject’s rarefied spirit. Though many tomes have been written on Spinoza’s thought, little has been published on his life, because, as Nadler (Philosophy/Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison) observes, most of his revealing personal letters were destroyed after his death. Accordingly, apart from sections on the long-known facts of Spinoza’s existence, especially the Amsterdam Jewish community’s infamous excommunication of him in1656, much of this biography’s mood is appropriately subjunctive: Spinoza may have known his contemporary Rembrandt; must have been amused by the Jewish fervor over the messianic pretender of his day, Shabbetai Zvi; and probably did not represent the Dutch government to the French, as has sometimes been claimed, during the Franco-Dutch war of the 1670s. Two facts convincingly deduced by Nadler about Spinoza are that he never studied for the rabbinate and that some of Amsterdam’s Jews continued to associate with him even after his excommunication. But, like 17th-century Netherlandish paintings, the strength of this study is its contextual details, as in the several pages devoted to discussing the Dutch craze for speculative investment in tulip bulbs imported from Turkey (the famously Dutch flower was not native to Holland) and its likely impact on the Spinoza family’s fortunes. The faint outlines of Spinoza’s life take on a brighter color against the backdrop of Nadler’s rich evocations of the tensions between Amsterdam’s Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews, Calvinist and Remonstrant Christians, and Orangist and De Wittian statesmen. The stories of Spinoza’s friendships with other intellectual luminaries of the day, such as Leibniz, Christiaan Huygens, and Robert Boyle, are retold in the context of this lively social and political history. Spinoza, so often sainted or demonized, at last receives a fine, measured biography. (11 photos, unseen)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-521-55210-9
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Cambridge Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
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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