As this thick book jumps back and forth between the two families, Maier sometimes strains to link all the words and deeds,...
Journalist Maier (Masters of Sex: The Life and Times of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the Couple Who Taught America How to Love, 2009, etc.) pieces together a multigenerational saga of two renowned families.
Writing a biography of an individual can become beset with difficulties. Writing a multicharacter history of both the Churchills and the Kennedys, covering primarily the 1930s through the 1960s, involves an almost unimaginably high degree of difficulty. Maier's cast of characters includes 14 Churchill family members and 15 Kennedy family members. As chronicled by the author, Winston Churchill, the British prime minister who led his empire through World War II, is without question the dominant figure within his family tree. Joseph P. Kennedy, the father of President John F. Kennedy, is less dominant but a formidable presence nonetheless. Churchill's wife, Clementine, and Joseph's wife, Rose, receive meaningful supporting roles, as do the Churchills' son Randolph and three of the nine Kennedy children (Joseph Junior, JFK and Kathleen). Beginning in the early 1930s, the connections between the two families grew increasingly complex, especially after Joseph became the American ambassador to the U.K., appointed by Franklin Roosevelt. Unsurprisingly, Maier portrays Winston Churchill as a highly educated man of letters who sometimes slipped into despair. He portrays Joseph as a scoundrel in business and a womanizer but someone who demonstrated intense devotion to his children. Perhaps most pleasing is Maier's skill at locating information about less famous individuals who played key roles in the ways the two families connected and disconnected. The most intriguing connecting character is Kay Halle, a writer/socialite who worked her way into the inner circles of both the Kennedys and the Churchills.
As this thick book jumps back and forth between the two families, Maier sometimes strains to link all the words and deeds, but his research carries the book along as interesting anecdotes continue to emerge.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-307-95679-8
Page Count: 752
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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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