Articulate and clear-eyed, Rosenberg’s memoir memorably records the struggles of a woman determined to be the agent of her...
A political activist from the ’60s through the early ’80s recounts her arduous journey from the FBI’s most-wanted list through a 16-year incarceration in maximum-security prisons.
Rosenberg was radicalized during the antiwar and black-power movements, and eventually went underground in the early ’80s after the FBI indicted her in a robbery-conspiracy case that resulted in the death of several officers. While unloading a vast cache of explosives in a U-haul van to a storage place in New Jersey in 1984, she was arrested and sentenced to 58 years in federal prison. Rosenberg and her partner maintained that they “were part of an organized illegal resistance movement [and] acting out of conscience.” Subsequently, they were treated as terrorists and subjected to the most stringent lock-up conditions in maximum-security prisons across the country. High-profile female political prisoners were unusual in government facilities at the time, and the correctional institution in Tucson, Ariz., housed more than 1,000 men and four women. The women were stuck in segregation with little natural light and few visits from lawyers, and a good part of the memoir discusses the appalling conditions, vindictive officers and clueless bureaucracy. From Tucson, Rosenberg was moved to facilities in Lexington, Ky.; Washington, D.C., where she was indicted on new charges of trying to bomb the U.S. Capitol; Mariana, Fla.; and Danbury, Conn. Her period of incarceration coincided with the burgeoning crack and AIDS epidemic, and Rosenberg became a vociferous advocate and health counselor. She writes movingly of her reconciliation with her parents and last visit to her dying father, as well as relationships made with other women prisoners. While denied parole, she was eventually pardoned by Bill Clinton in 2001.
Articulate and clear-eyed, Rosenberg’s memoir memorably records the struggles of a woman determined to be the agent of her own life.Pub Date: March 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8065-3304-9
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Citadel/Kensington
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2010
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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