In the end, Wicker offers little more than “a nice man with good connections”: perhaps not the worst president, though the...
A readable life, at once respectful and critical, of Bush I, who nursed “what must have been a burning desire to become president of the United States” without formulating any particular plans for what he’d do once he got the job.
Novelist/historian Wicker (Easter Lily, 1998, etc.) bookends his Dwight D. Eisenhower (2002) with this study of Bush père, who, like Ike, “did not offer himself as a proponent of certain issues or of a definite ideology or of any particular policy—such as, say, helping most Americans achieve affordable health care.” Yet, Wicker observes, Bush fought hard to attain office, and fought hard for much of the privilege that would accrue to his children, including the current president. Though he may have been born, in Ann Richards’s famous quip, with a “silver foot in his mouth,” Bush was no stranger to hard work, and Wicker’s account gives reason to admire his accomplishments as a businessman who carved out a small empire for himself in the oil fields of West Texas, to say nothing of his bravery in combat during WWII. Wicker is less inclined to admire Bush’s political career, however; confronted with a notoriously hard-right Texas Republican Party in the age of Goldwater, Bush betrayed his moderate inclinations and “moved almost as far to the right as was Goldwater himself,” denouncing civil rights and then cluelessly wondering why Texas’s black voters did not embrace him. Bush’s subsequent appointments to diplomatic and civil service postings in places such as Beijing and Langley were uneventful, Wicker writes, and his spot on the Reagan ticket was a matter of political expediency; Reagan had to be lobbied hard to endorse Bush’s candidacy once the Gipper’s two terms were up. In office, Bush accomplished almost nothing and couldn’t seem to offer any reason for voters to return him to office—and so they didn’t.
In the end, Wicker offers little more than “a nice man with good connections”: perhaps not the worst president, though the acorn doesn’t fall far from the oak.Pub Date: May 3, 2004
ISBN: 0-670-03303-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2004
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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