A model of well-documented revisionist history.
The marriage of Richard and Pat Nixon undergoes sharp analysis by Swift, a formally trained psychologist and first-family historian (The Kennedys Amidst the Gathering Storm: A Thousand Days in London, 1938-1940, 2008, etc.).
The author had access to letters and other of the first lady’s materials unavailable to previous biographers and historians. He uses them wisely, smashing stereotypes of Richard Nixon as a cold personality who had no clue how to treat his wife and of Pat Nixon as a plastic female too old-fashioned in her idea of marriage to make an impact as a political wife. The book is certainly no valentine to the Pat and Dick of the title, however. It is a nuanced portrait of each as an individual and of them as a married couple, working through good and bad times while being scrutinized intensively by political foes, ideologues, academics and journalist gossipmongers. Perhaps the most surprising conclusion by Swift is that Pat demonstrated sympathy for women's rights not only in the United States, but around the globe. The author’s evidence is plentiful, and he writes with grace throughout the mostly chronological narrative. From the opening chapters, it is obvious that Swift understands the skillful use of details and anecdotes that have escaped a large number of Nixon biographers. Even his telling of the couple's lengthy courtship feels fresh, as the ambitious but socially awkward young Quaker lawyer trapped in the small California town of his upbringing pursues the self-possessed, physically gorgeous, much-sought-after young teacher who grew up with almost no advantages. Swift delves into their compatibility ups and downs, their parenting skills and other private matters, but he focuses mostly on the difficult decisions Pat and Dick had to make together before undertaking seemingly long-shot attempts to serve in the House of Representatives, Senate and the White House.
A model of well-documented revisionist history.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4516-7694-5
Page Count: 450
Publisher: Threshold Editions/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 6, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
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