Wilkinson strikes exactly the right notes in this deft look at one of America’s towering musical treasures.
An economical, unsentimental, illuminating look at the venerable folk singer.
Veteran New Yorker contributor Wilkinson (The Happiest Man in the World: An Account of the Life of Poppa Neutrino, 2007, etc.) here expands a magazine profile of Seeger, who turns 90 this May. The musician asked the journalist to pen a book that could be read in one sitting, and we see a pleasingly close-up view as he rattles around the Beacon, N.Y., cabin he built with his own hands. The author gracefully reveals the arc of Seeger’s life and career. Born into a privileged, musical family, as a youth the musician gained a love for American folk music, facility on the five-string banjo and a commitment to political and social causes. He dropped out of Harvard to play with folk icon Woody Guthrie and work with folklorist John Lomax at the Library of Congress. After some time on the road, Seeger was embraced as a performer—first by the American left as a member of the Almanac Singers and then by pop listeners as part of the hitmaking quartet the Weavers, who notched a No. 1 hit in 1950 with “Goodnight, Irene.” The core of the book focuses on his victimization during the Joseph McCarthy witch hunts, when his ex-Communist background led to the Weavers’ blacklisting and Seeger’s appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee, which resulted in a contempt of Congress conviction that was later overturned. Effectively shut out of performing on television for a decade, Seeger nonetheless became the dean of the American folk-music movement, thanks to his fearless and principled work on behalf of the nuclear-disarmament, civil-rights, antiwar and environmental movements. Here he emerges as a quiet, matter-of-fact yet hard-headed and courageous individual with a rare gift for drawing listeners of all ages into his songs, and a political boldness as understated as it is uncompromising.
Wilkinson strikes exactly the right notes in this deft look at one of America’s towering musical treasures.Pub Date: May 3, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-307-26995-9
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2009
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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