In the elegiac spirit of A Thousand Days—and with access to the family papers—Schlesinger has mounted a massive attack on the Robert Kennedy conundrum (shy/aggressive, compassionate/ruthless) and, no less, on the Kennedy brothers' detractors. The themes, the interpretations, the stories are not new; but never have they been so assidously nailed down. RFK is described as an "overachiever" who tenaciously overcame his childhood handicaps to become a scrappy youth and, as manager of JFK's 1952 senatorial campaign, his father's fighting son. "In part it was an [Irish] imposture," Schlesinger writes. "The gentle self was never extinguished." Later exposure to human suffering strengthened the repressed "instinct of sympathy" and gave it "social direction." But it was not until his father's incapacitation and his brother's death that "the qualities he had so long subordinated in the interest of others. . . could rise freely to the surface. He could be himself at last." A reductive analysis, one may decide, given the complexity of the man who emerges in these 850 crowded pages which—if they accomplished nothing else—would reaffirm RFK's salient role as a doer. And indeed it is when Kennedy failed to act (e.g., to block the Martin Luther King wiretaps) or over-reacted (e.g., in pursuing Jimmy Hoffa, countering the steel price rise, supporting counterinsurgency in South Vietnam) that Schlesinger's defense is least convincing. (That the credo "If there was a problem, there had to be a solution" exacts a cost, he does not recognize.) But there is sufficient here to occupy a battery of historians, some of it openly anti-revisionist (e.g., a broad defense of JFK's handling of the Cuban missile crisis), some of it startling (RFK ostensibly broke with LBJ after the latter' spoke of JFK's death as "divine retribution" for the Trujillo and Diem assassinations), some of it the scouring of old wounds (William Manchester, Gore Vidal), and much of it—especially apropos of RFK's extra-Justice Department activities—a considerable amplification of the record. Sentimental, rhetorical, partisan—and indispensable.
Pub Date: Sept. 5, 1978
ISBN: 0618219285
Page Count: 1092
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1978
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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