A fitting and welcome monument to a surprisingly complex actor in early American history.
New York Observer columnist and editor Golway (For the Cause of Liberty, 2000, etc.) rescues a Revolutionary War hero from oblivion, and deservedly so.
Nathanael Greene was a Rhode Islander who mysteriously earned a promotion from private to general of militia almost overnight, and who otherwise embodied a bundle of contradictions: he was a nominal pacifist who excelled at warfare, a pious man who was fond of a visit to the alehouse, “a walking incongruity: a self-taught child of the Enlightenment, dressed in the unadorned black garb of a Quaker.” When textbooks mention him at all, they tend to cast Greene in a saintly light, whereas Golway accords him all the usual human failings. Among other things, the man wasn’t above politics; he grumbled about George Washington’s failings as a commander and lobbied hard for position, especially against rival general Horatio Gates, though he skillfully depicted himself as being the unwilling recipient of rank and honor. And he was also, Golway hints, not above earning a dollar here and there by helping mercantile relatives gain access to lucrative army contracts. Greene also had positive qualities, however, that more than matched his shortcomings, one being sheer bravery; he uncomplainingly turned up in the thick of important battles, such as the Continental victory at Trenton and defeat at Germantown, and at the end of the war his mere appearance on the battlefield, apparently, was enough to send his British foes into flight. Greene had a simple view of the war: “We fight, get beat, rise and fight again.” That persistence wore down royal forces in the South, with the last battles of the Revolutionary War. At places like Cowpens, the Dan River, Guilford Courthouse, and Eutaw Springs, Greene met everything the British threw at him, and if he lost many battles, he at least kept up a fight that would have been all too easy to abandon.
A fitting and welcome monument to a surprisingly complex actor in early American history.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2005
ISBN: 0-8050-7066-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2004
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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
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