The life of Edwin Land could easily spring from one of Horatio Alger’s stories. Son of a scrap-metal dealer, Land dropped out of Harvard to pursue the inventing bug and his dream of creating a cheap plastic sheet polarizer. He wanted to decrease auto accidents caused by headlight glare, but it was with sunglasses and photography that the polarizer and the newly founded Polaroid corporation found success. An inveterate innovator and conceptualizer, Land would eventually receive more patents than any other American, excepting Edison. His genius was both for the sudden inspiration and the organizational ability to get people behind him to fill in the details. For example, the idea for instant photography came to him in the space of an afternoon, but it would take many years and many talented individuals to work out all the details. He also developed a new theory of color vision, worked as a science advisor for President Eisenhower, and helped design NASA. He drove Polaroid relentlessly to create new refinements and inventions such as color film and the SX-70 camera. He was motivated by the belief that “the bottom line’s in heaven. The real business of business is building things.” His magic touch held right until the end when he developed instant color movie film just as video recorders were coming on the market. The costs to Polaroid were enormous and led to a gradual severing of ties between Land and his company. Former New York Times science reporter McElheny has done a formidable research job, but he can—t seem to decide whether this is a popular account or one for specialists. There are long descriptions of technology and processes that are almost unintelligible to the layperson. The organization throughout is also appalling, with frequent, inexplicable shifts back and forth in time. Finally, McElheny’s Land seems like a guest in his own biography, as ghostly and indistinct as the image on a negative. (b&w photos)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-7382-0009-3
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Perseus
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1998
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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