Not without flaws but unquestionably inspiring.
A noted progressive activist’s account of his twin battles for social justice and against early-onset amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
When Barkan celebrated his first wedding anniversary in 2016, he counted himself and his wife “the happiest and luckiest people we knew.” Both had jobs they loved, the author as an activist/lawyer for the Center for Popular Democracy and his wife as an English professor. Days later, he learned that what he thought was carpal tunnel syndrome was actually ALS. In this memoir, which he initially wrote to leave behind for both the progressive movement and the infant son he would not see grow to adulthood, Barkan looks back on his life and achievements. He begins with his social conscience awakening at Columbia University, where he became involved in radical political organizations. At Yale Law School, Barkan threw himself into work advocating for immigrant and worker rights. Rather than become a civil rights lawyer, the author did what “got my blood pumping”: argue about public policy and organize protests. At the end of the Occupy movement, he organized the Fed Up campaign, which sought to change Federal Reserve monetary policies to help low-income people. But just as Fed Up began gaining notoriety and traction several years later, Barkan faced increasing physical difficulties. In May 2017, he walked with a leg brace; by early 2018, he was wheelchair-bound and needed a ventilator to breathe. Despite the deep strains his condition produced in his marriage, he continued to fight alongside other progressives, embarking on a summertime “six-week, twenty-state trip, from California to Maine,” to help change the balance of power in Congress. Though sometimes self-congratulatory in tone, Barkan’s book—part of which he wrote with the assistance of a technology that allowed him to use only his eyes—still moves with its portrait of a man driven to act on his beliefs while learning to accept the injustice of early mortality.
Not without flaws but unquestionably inspiring.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-982111-54-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
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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