Dual biography of Lucy and Desi by the author of Natalie & R.J.: A Hollywood Love Story (1988), Cary Grant: A Touch of Elegance (1987), etc. Despite his stylelessness, Harris performs a thorough job on the lives of TV's greatest comedy team, although he does not offer complete cast listings, show dates, or titles. What he does capture well is Desi's solemn patience as he explains things to Lucy: Desi's Cuban tones enliven every page he's on—but then so does Lucy's amused tolerance with Desi. The two first met in the RKO commissary when Desi was a bombshell Broadway success at 23 and Lucy at 29 was grinding out six musicals a year. Lucy grew up in a suburb of Jamestown, N.Y., where she became known as the ``Jamestown hussy'' because of her raccoon coat and flapper's galoshes. After a few ``missing years,'' about which there are dark hints, she landed a job as a Goldwyn Girl at MGM. Meanwhile, Desi grew up spoiled rotten as the son of the mayor of Santiago, Cuba. At 15, he was welcomed as a regular at a fastidious brothel. Moving to Miami, he landed a job as a guitarist at the Roney Plaza, became a featured singer with Xavier Cugat's band, then formed his own band and had his breakthrough with the conga. After he and Lucy eloped, they soon found themselves separated by film work, and his infidelities led to her filing for divorce before their fourth anniversary. They became reconciled, but Desi's gambling, girls, and booze never stopped, and life became hell on earth. The birth of Ricky, Jr., on I Love Lucy, timed to the birth of Desi, Jr., in real life, drew unbelievable ratings and had the country crazed. The final I Love Lucy brought on national mourning. Lucy's second marriage, to Gary Morton, outlasted her 19 years with Desi, with Gary calling his friend Desi his husband-in-law. Amusing, sometimes moving. (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs- -not seen.)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-671-74709-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
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
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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