To do otherwise is to invite unsettling scenarios, each carefully considered. Those seeking either peace or regime change...
Is Iran a nuclear threat? According to Israeli journalist Melman and Iranian-born political analyst Javedanfar, the answer is a resounding yes.
Back in Iran’s pro-American and even pro-Israeli days, the Shah Reza Pahlavi had risked alienating both allies by funding an aggressive program to develop nuclear capabilities. Somewhat ironically, when the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in February 1979, he considered nuclear weapons a symptom of “imperialism and the ‘decadent’ culture of the West.” By the authors’ account, there are many reasons to believe that the ayatollah’s suspicions are no longer shared among the Iranian leadership, and thus many more reasons to be worried. One is that the president, the direct-descendant-of-Mohammad Ahmad Ahmadinejad, has some worrisome ideas, among them a commitment to wiping Israel, the Little Satan, off the face of the earth—he is a Holocaust denier and an ardent opponent of the Great Satan, namely America, though he hates it less than Israel. Considering some of the talk that has been lately emanating from the White House and the fact that American forces are on both flanks, Ahmadinejad may have cause to consider the U.S. “willing to achieve its expansionist goals through the use of brute force.” Given that Israeli leader Ehud Olmert has said that he has received a promise from President Bush that Iran would never be allowed to have nuclear weapons, the authors urge, there is pressing need to negotiate for dismantlement of Iran’s program. The mere existence of those weapons—which, the authors allow, is still conjecture—is no guarantee that the Iranians would use them. “On the surface,” they write in closing, “Iran’s leaders show no mercy and have no inhibitions, but they have occasionally proved to be responsible and even restrained.”
To do otherwise is to invite unsettling scenarios, each carefully considered. Those seeking either peace or regime change will find provocative arguments here.Pub Date: June 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-7867-1887-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2007
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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