Applying the kid-glove treatment to his subjects, the author doesn’t unearth much that hasn’t been picked over before.
Popular historian Fleming (The Perils of Peace: America’s Struggle for Survival After Yorktown, 2007, etc.) takes a rosy look at the enduring marriages of Washington, Franklin, Adams, Hamilton, Jefferson and Madison, despite some dalliances, separations and extreme job pressure.
The author is determined to restore the honor to these great men, whose lives have been dissected ceaselessly for evidence of human fallibility—especially Jefferson, whose relationship with his slave Sally Hemings probably resulted in several children. Fleming doesn’t buy it, and he’s holding out for the results of DNA testing. Instead he underscores Jefferson’s tender devotion to Martha Skelton, who died after ten years of marriage in 1782, leaving him with only their daughter to comfort him. Washington, despite a youthful rejection, made a spectacular match in the wealthy widow Martha Custis and was put in charge of her 17,000-acre Virginia estate. The evidence shows he grew to love his sweet-tempered, practical wife, despite their inability to have children, while she found him a manly pillar of strength and a good stepfather to her children. Franklin had an “ungovernable sex drive” and married his landlord’s daughter Deborah, who was then forced to raise his illegitimate son as her own. She did not accompany him to Paris as emissary, and after she died he was a great favorite of the ladies, even proposing marriage to his beloved Madame Helvetius. In the chapters on Adams and Madison, their strong wives take over the narratives with a presidential agenda of their own—Abigail Adams as a protofeminist, and Dolly Madison as an inimitable hostess. Hamilton married a rich man’s daughter, flirted with his sister-in-law, indulged in a seduction by a speculator’s wife and was blackmailed by the husband. He died scrambling to repair the marriage and, we are assured, racked by guilt.
Applying the kid-glove treatment to his subjects, the author doesn’t unearth much that hasn’t been picked over before.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-06-113912-3
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Smithsonian/Collins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2009
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
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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