Gregorian made an important life for himself the old-fashioned way, by earning every little bit of it.
The restless Gregorian—presidencies at the New York Public Library, Brown University, the Carnegie Corporation—offers a memoir that expertly blends poetry, pedantry, progressivism, and unruly university politics.
By his fourth sentence, Gregorian is already engaged in a scholarly discourse on the identity of biblical rivers—and so the book continues, with Gregorian always happy to drop in a few lines of Robert Frost, say, or to explain how The Sorrows of Young Werther captures his feelings after a love affair falls apart. For Gregorian is all about brains—big brains, using them nimbly, honestly, compassionately—starting with his grandmother’s teachings when he was a poor youth in Tabriz, Iran, right through to his present post at the Carnegie Corporation. Getting there wasn’t easy, and what a story it makes: leaving Iran, alone and destitute, to study in Beirut; gaining entrance to Stanford; and teaching at San Francisco State in the mid- to late-1960s (where he was faculty advisor to the Progressive Labor Party: Gregorian is equally at ease talking about the vagaries of the history of the Caucasus or about the split in SDS). The author bounces from the University of Texas to Penn, keeping one hand busy with his teaching while dipping the other into the mire of university politics. He is brilliant in delineating the backstabbing, pettiness, and obfuscations he contended with in order to raise the level of educational quality when he was dean at various schools. He has a light touch, knowing when to coax the reader gently through an intricate piece of philanthropic politics, and when to let rip: “I was not a Mr. Magoo. If somebody spits at me, I cannot pretend it is a raindrop.” His stint at the NYPL and now at Carnegie allows him to fuse learning with philanthropy—but his loss from academia is a great one.
Gregorian made an important life for himself the old-fashioned way, by earning every little bit of it.Pub Date: June 6, 2003
ISBN: 0-684-80834-X
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2003
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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