Absolutely delightful slices of Americana from Hubbell (Broadsides from the Other Orders, 1993, etc.). Known as a crackerjack natural historian, Hubbell here dons a journalist's garb to file these wry reports (the title comes from the New Yorker department, ``Our Far-Flung Correspondents,'' where most of these pieces first appeared). She puts in a lot of miles behind the wheel to discover the best pies to be found along the nation's highways. She researches the folk history of Hopping John, that tasty dish of black-eyed peas and rice often served as a New Year's ritual. She attends an annual get-together of magicians in Colon, Mich., where ``quick hands and sly diversions'' can be found on every street corner, at any hour. There are fleeting sketches on delivering honey in New York City (Hubbell tends an apiary in the Ozarks), the National Bowling Hall of Fame, the vexing street layout of Boston. Two of the longer articles are among the best in the collection. The first is a brightly amusing look at the tabloid Weekly World News, newspapering at its ``absurdist, post-postmodern limits,'' where the writers collect big paychecks, as the editor confesses, ``because we are, in effect, asking them to end their careers . . . We are the French Foreign Legion of Journalism.'' The other is a report from an earthquake watch: It had been predicted that New Madrid, Mo., would be hammered by a mighty trembler on December 3, 1990. Hubbell burrows into the suspect terrain of earthquake forecasting, mining it for humor, giving a tweak to self-important scientists (December 3 passed uneventfully in New Madrid). All the stories are smooth as cream, droll, strange subjects turned fascinating, with the clarity and simplicity of Robert Frost. Hubbell at her clever, entertaining best. (photos not seen)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-42833-X
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
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
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
