Entertaining but too short on facts to deliver on its promise.
An attempt to fill a gap in an otherwise thoroughly examined life.
Hectored by his wife, war correspondent Martha Gellhorn, into going to Europe in 1944, Ernest Hemingway flew to London to cover the war for Collier's magazine. He was in his mid-40s, internationally famous for his fiction, and had no enthusiasm for journalism; he intended to write just enough to remain employed while salting away material for future novels. During his 10 months in Europe, Hemingway rode a landing craft to Omaha Beach on D-Day (and then rode it back to the troopship), assembled a private army of partisans in France, and accompanied an infantry regiment when it was cut to pieces in the Hürtgenwald. His physical courage and enthusiasm for combat are beyond question. But while Hemingway's bibulous exploits in London and Paris are well-documented, exactly what he did in the field remains shrouded in mystery, and Mort (Thieves' Road: The Black Hills Betrayal and Custer's Path to Little Bighorn, 2015, etc.) cannot lift the veil. Parties, dinners, and marital strife aside, Hemingway is missing from much of the book, which is padded with elaborate detail on topics ranging from French political factions to tactics for fighting in Norman hedgerows. When Hemingway appears, a gauzy curtain falls. Regarding his ride on the landing craft, "the details…are a little sketchy." The author presents him amongst his guerrillas but describes none of their activities besides their march into Paris to liberate the Ritz Hotel’s cellar, about which "there's something of a mystery." Even in the Hürtgenwald, Hemingway appears briefly in two firefights and otherwise fades into the background of the larger narrative. Mort rejects the claim that Hemingway was just "a tourist in a helmet," but unlike the frontline soldiers he so admired, he could leave the front any time he wanted and often did.
Entertaining but too short on facts to deliver on its promise.Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-68177-247-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Sept. 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
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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