by William D. Cohan ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 9, 2019
An emotionally intense reminder—though not always intentionally so—that even privilege must kneel before fate.
A memoir/biography about four of the author’s Andover classmates, each of whom died an early, violent death.
Cohan (Why Wall Street Matters, 2017, etc.), a New York Times columnist, Vanity Fair special correspondent, and CNBC on-air contributor, returns with a very personal, occasionally grim text. In addition to the stories of his classmates, he also provides information about the history of Andover, the only “American high school [that] has produced two presidents of the United States.” The four friends were Jack Berman, Will Daniel, Harry Bull, and John F. Kennedy Jr. (Guess who receives the lion’s share of the pages?) The author’s approach is consistent: He sketches the person’s background, focusing on the Andover years (he alludes occasionally to his own contacts with each), and then leads us through the post-Andover life. One was gunned down in a mass shooting in a law firm; a taxi struck and killed another; the third drowned—with his two young daughters—while sailing on Lake Michigan; the fourth, as most readers will remember, perished in a plane crash on the way to Martha’s Vineyard. Cohan is frank about the struggles each figure faced in his life, from substance abuse to marital difficulties to psychological issues. Although the author mentions the many advantages all four men enjoyed—easy access to money, higher education, and employment—he keeps our attention on the human side of their lives. He reminds us of Kennedy’s famous little-boy salute at his father’s funeral procession in 1963, his stunning good looks (a “Sexiest Man Alive” for People), his now-and-then academic struggles (he twice failed the bar exam), his sometimes-raucous marriage, and his involvement in the creation of the defunct George magazine. Though portions of the narrative are undeniably moving and poignant, some readers may grow weary of the privilege on display.
An emotionally intense reminder—though not always intentionally so—that even privilege must kneel before fate.Pub Date: July 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-07052-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
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by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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SEEN & HEARD
by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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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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