A well-turned introduction to a band whose sleek surfaces belied complicated ideas.
An appropriately chilly and brainy history of the pioneering German electronic group.
Founded in Düsseldorf in 1970 by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider, Kraftwerk (“power station”) was an unlikely pop phenomenon. Their early hit “Autobahn” was a distillation of a 23-minute track meant to evoke the drift and speed of the national highway, and the members cultivated such an austere persona they were all but anonymous. While playing live, the members lined up like a row of passport-control officers, with practically no audience banter. Schütte, a literary scholar and hardcore Kraftwerk fan, doesn’t strive to crack the ice that encases the band’s public image. We learn little about the personal lives of Hütter, Schneider (who died in 2020), and company—except about their obsession with bicycling, an avocation that informed their final studio album, 2003’s Tour de France Soundtracks. What the book lacks in personal insight, though, it makes up for with the author’s well-researched understanding of the thinking behind their music. The Kraftwerk philosophy is best summarized by the title of their 1978 album, The Man-Machine: The band strived to capture the bustle of their industrial city (and the roads around it) while contemplating (and lightly satirizing) notions of humanity’s perfectibility. Because they were so savvy about embracing new technologies—they hired an engineer to wrangle the notoriously complicated Synclavier II synthesizer—they were of-the-moment well into the 1980s. Because their songs focused on the integration of man and technology (cars, trains, computers, bicycles), they never became irrelevant. Beyond the theorizing, Schütte suggests, Kraftwerk also paved the way for Germany to develop its own cultural transformation from “genocide [to] a brighter future inaugurated by a post-war generation that had learned its lessons from a terrible history.” A more intimate and thorough band biography would be welcome, but intimacy was never Kraftwerk’s long suit.
A well-turned introduction to a band whose sleek surfaces belied complicated ideas.Pub Date: June 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-14-198675-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
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
A raw but uneven narrative capturing Gen Z anxiety, though sometimes undermined by its attention-seeking impulses.
Young actor’s path from troubled youth to ascending Hollywood success.
In his provocative debut memoir, the emerging star behind memorable turns in The White Lotus and Euphoria delivers an engaging if somewhat disjointed portrait of coming-of-age trauma and Hollywood ambition. Gage vividly recounts his chaotic San Diego childhood—divorced parents, substance abuse, and a harrowing stint at a brutal rehab facility—with the kind of unflinching detail that will resonate powerfully with young adult readers navigating similar struggles. His voice feels most authentic when excavating family dysfunction and internal turmoil, capturing the emotional extremes and disconnection that define so much of adolescent experience. The memoir’s second half, chronicling his move to Los Angeles and emergence as an actor while grappling with his expanding sexual awareness and subsequent romantic relationships, feels less focused. Here, Gage’s self-aware attention-seeking—the book’s driving conceit—tips toward performative navel-gazing. His eventual borderline personality disorder diagnosis provides some clarity: “After my BPD diagnosis, I thought I’d discovered some profound epiphany about who I was and why I did the things that I did….I could finally see the patterns I’d been blind to before. Every relationship, the same cycle. Too fast, too deep, too reckless.” While Gage succeeds in chronicling the messy realities of mental health, addiction, and queer identity with refreshing honesty, his tendency toward calculated vulnerability can feel manufactured. The memoir works best as a snapshot of a particular generational moment—one in which therapy, social media, and celebrity culture collide in ways both illuminating and exhausting. Despite its inconsistent execution, Gage proves himself an effective and often entertaining storyteller, offering genuine insight into the psychological mechanics of family connection, fame seeking, and self-destruction that will resonate particularly with younger readers seeking meaning amid the noise.
A raw but uneven narrative capturing Gen Z anxiety, though sometimes undermined by its attention-seeking impulses.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781668080078
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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