A bemused, entertaining portrait of a gold-toned incarnation of the American dream, plus some believable financials for...
New York Times business reporter O'Brien gets down and dirty—in the most good-natured way—to craft a myth-busting biography of the real-estate developer.
The author has been following Donald Trump’s story for the past 15 years, watching him rise, fall and rise again on a self-generated tide of publicity and endless hyperbolic statements. While Trump’s business trajectory isn’t in dispute, O’Brien takes issue with the financial specifics. He punctures decades’ worth of bluster and offers his own take on Trump’s career and the “kitten’s skein of holdings Donald had woven together” by the time The Apprentice anointed him the nation’s most successful developer. Highlights O’Brien explores include Trump’s early battles with Mayor Ed Koch, his business dealings with known Mafia associates and the bailout by his much-less-famous siblings that kept him from going bankrupt. The Donald’s character is almost too colorful; the business deals based on braggadocio, the creative reporting on personal wealth and the trophy wives eventually blend together in a glittering haze. O’Brien keeps coming back to the numbers, however. The book’s essence can be discerned in his analysis of the Forbes 400; for each year that the magazine reported Trump’s personal wealth, the author has done his own reporting. For example, in 1982, Forbes said Donald had an undefined share of the Trump family’s $200 million, “at a time when all [he] owned personally was a half interest in the Grand Hyatt and a share of the yet to be completed Trump Tower.” O’Brien also mentions that New Jersey regulators assessed Donald as being “short on cash and in debt up to his eyeballs.” It’s no shock that Trump is a self-promoter, but it is surprising that he appears to have cooperated with the author, despite having declared O’Brien a “whack job” to the press.
A bemused, entertaining portrait of a gold-toned incarnation of the American dream, plus some believable financials for anyone who wants to know the real fiscal story.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2005
ISBN: 0-446-57854-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2005
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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