The brothers Kuntz (Tom is a New York Times editor, Phil, a Wall Street Journal reporter) use journalism as a kind of noble...
Far from stale gossip and bureaucratic tedium, this is a carefully edited and annotated compendium of FBI files on Sinatra, made public under the Freedom of Information Act.
Two years after Sinatra’s death, this abridged version of his 1,275-page dossier is a historian’s hoot for what it reveals about Hoover and his FBI. There are no new revelations about Sinatra, however. Initially considered little more than a seducer of naïve teenaged girls, Sinatra became a concern to the FBI as he grew into his role as the century’s most popular male entertainer—one who befriended (and possibly even cuckolded) US presidents. Beginning with an overlong biographical preface about Sinatra, this parade of letters, internal documents, and transcripts (many with names blotted out by the FBI’s censors, most adorned by caustic comments from Hoover and his cronies) show the Bureau as a greedy collector of lies and worthless innuendo that, when investigated, ended up telling Hoover precisely what he didn’t want to believe (namely, that Sinatra was not a Communist and that he had legitimate medical reasons for being deferred from military service during WWII). In fact, Hoover learned that he had much in common with his nemesis: fierce patriotism, an explosive temper, an inner sentimental streak, and a tendency to remain loyal to friends in low places. By the time Hoover had enough evidence to nail Sinatra on his organized crime connections, Sinatra had become the public champion (and private pimp) of John and Bobby Kennedy. Far from controlling Sinatra, Hoover actually came to the singer’s aid on several occasions, helping to investigate the kidnapping of Frank Jr. and sending his agents on various fool’s errands for him (such as the time he conducted a four-month investigation of the crank who had threatened to blind Sinatra by hitting him in the eye with a poisoned pickle).
The brothers Kuntz (Tom is a New York Times editor, Phil, a Wall Street Journal reporter) use journalism as a kind of noble rot: musty memoranda, under their careful sifting, ferment into a historical morality fable in which celebrity conquers all. (8 b&w photos, not seen)Pub Date: July 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-8129-3276-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2000
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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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