An excellent introduction for laymen and students of literature.
A concise account of a tireless political writer’s adventures and education.
The publication of Orwell’s novel 1984 serves as the endpoint for this pocket biography, insofar as everything in the writer’s rich life seems to have contributed to that masterpiece. Agathocleous (English/Rutgers) argues that Orwell’s status as a scholarship boy at Eton awakened his sense of class consciousness early on. Working in the Imperial Police in Burma introduced him to the injustices of colonialism. Posing as a derelict in London and Paris, he began his literary career as a participatory journalist, seeing first-hand the economic failures of the prosperous West. These stories are well known, of course, and the author does not add much to them. Chapters devoted to Orwell’s experience in the Spanish Civil War and as a BBC correspondent in London during WWII are more informative: Orwell was frustrated by the censors and the bureaucrats of the BBC, and these lesser difficulties compared unfavorably with his charged, egalitarian experiences in Spain (where he fought bravely and suffered injuries). Eventually he quit the BBC to write for leftist journals and engage in the political infighting of the day, bucking popular opinion—and elite dogma—in his criticisms of the USSR. In due time that struggle bore fruit: in 1945 he published his fable Animal Farm, a manifesto against the abuse of political power that was also his first critical and financial success. Three years later, with the war over and Stalin by then perceived as an enemy, he wrote 1984 while ensconced on a Scottish island, bedridden and dying from tuberculosis. Details of Orwell’s family life are given throughout, but his literary exploits crowd them out. Recent charges that Orwell denounced friends and colleagues to the British authorities as communist sympathizers are given scant attention, however, and may prompt frustrated readers to wonder why a longer consideration of this topic was omitted.
An excellent introduction for laymen and students of literature.Pub Date: July 3, 2000
ISBN: 0-19-512185-6
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2000
Skilled and graceful exploration of the soul of an astonishing human being.
Full-immersion journalist Kidder (Home Town, 1999, etc.) tries valiantly to keep up with a front-line, muddy-and-bloody general in the war against infectious disease in Haiti and elsewhere.
The author occasionally confesses to weariness in this gripping account—and why not? Paul Farmer, who has an M.D. and a Ph.D. from Harvard, appears to be almost preternaturally intelligent, productive, energetic, and devoted to his causes. So trotting alongside him up Haitian hills, through international airports and Siberian prisons and Cuban clinics, may be beyond the capacity of a mere mortal. Kidder begins with a swift account of his first meeting with Farmer in Haiti while working on a story about American soldiers, then describes his initial visit to the doctor’s clinic, where the journalist felt he’d “encountered a miracle.” Employing guile, grit, grins, and gifts from generous donors (especially Boston contractor Tom White), Farmer has created an oasis in Haiti where TB and AIDS meet their Waterloos. The doctor has an astonishing rapport with his patients and often travels by foot for hours over difficult terrain to treat them in their dwellings (“houses” would be far too grand a word). Kidder pauses to fill in Farmer’s amazing biography: his childhood in an eccentric family sounds like something from The Mosquito Coast; a love affair with Roald Dahl’s daughter ended amicably; his marriage to a Haitian anthropologist produced a daughter whom he sees infrequently thanks to his frenetic schedule. While studying at Duke and Harvard, Kidder writes, Farmer became obsessed with public health issues; even before he’d finished his degrees he was spending much of his time in Haiti establishing the clinic that would give him both immense personal satisfaction and unsurpassed credibility in the medical worlds he hopes to influence.
Skilled and graceful exploration of the soul of an astonishing human being.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2003
ISBN: 0-375-50616-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003
Music critic Orgill shares her love of music with her choice of women who influenced the music of their contemporaries and their successors, selecting the women according to her own aesthetic and experience in the music business. She highlights women who were “terrific” singers, who took charge of their lives and their careers, and who had an interesting story to tell. Each singer represents the decade in which she did her best or most prolific work. Sophie Tucker, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Ethel Merman, Judy Garland, and Anita O’Day represent the past. Joan Baez, Bette Midler, Madonna, and Lucinda Williams are singing today. Each chapter includes basic biographical information, anecdotes that illustrate the qualities that make each singer memorable, and descriptions of the singers’ unique musical attributes. Historical photographs illustrate the text. Teens will relate to the inclusion of facts in sidebars such as “What Madonna Wore.” We learn that Ethel Merman looked for bargains in everyday dress but splurged on a mink-trimmed chartreuse evening gown. Orgill also notes what the singers earned and how that compared to average salaries at the time. In “What’s New, ” Orgill details the changes in recorded music from the 12-inch record introduced in 1902 to the digital videodisc of 1997. Missing, however, is the development of music on the Internet. Other sidebars bring attention to musical styles or to noteworthy musical events of each period. Also included is a discography and bibliography. A lively, informative, and enthusiastic title. (Nonfiction.12+)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-81991-9
Page Count: 168
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2000
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