A volume that will be welcomed by anyone with an interest in the Reagan presidency so overwhelming it has not yet been sated by the glut of books on this subject. To be fair, this could serve as a reasonable introduction to Reagan's presidency for readers not already familiar with the basic events. But essentially, Pemberton (History/Univ. of Wisconsin, La Crosse) has produced an abridged encyclopedia of Ronald Reagan. On one hand there is an apparently Herculean effort to use every available written source, from unpublished papers to first-person accounts to scholarly secondary works, in a brief yet comprehensive survey of the major events of Reagan's adult life. On the other hand, there is the predictable result that not a single event receives satisfactory attention. Pemberton's perspective is balanced and serious throughout, but even objective description can be misleading when it is too brief. Devoting less than a single page to such complex events as the origins of the savings-and-loan fiasco or the evolution of the 1986 Tax Reform Act can create the impression that a topic has been addressed even though essential information is missing. Even where details are added to the narration, the presentation is unsatisfying. For example, Pemberton describes Reagan's post-inaugural signing of an order to freeze hiring of governmental employees as evidence of his mastery of symbolic politics. However, throughout the book we are told that Reagan himself rarely made decisions, and never about details. Was he the author of this action, then, or simply a performer? Without addressing this question, the description has little depth. In an arena already crowded with juicy first-person exposÇs and academic diatribes, a detached, surface-level survey isn't going to generate much interest. (16 pages photos, not seen)
Pub Date: June 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-7656-0095-1
Page Count: 328
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
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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