A feisty Roosevelt takes center stage in a mostly lively history.
An account of a much-publicized early-20th-century trial that exposed “the sordid reality” of New York State politics.
In April 1915, eager spectators filled a Syracuse courtroom in anticipation of a trial involving one of the most prominent men in America: former President Theodore Roosevelt, who was being sued for libel by party boss William Barnes over Roosevelt’s published assertion that Barnes was corrupt. The trial yielded a 3,738-page typed transcript as well as colorful reports in newspapers across the country, sources that ABC’s chief legal affairs correspondent Abrams and Fisher (co-authors: Lincoln’s Last Trial: The Murder Case that Propelled Him to the Presidency, 2018, etc.) have mined thoroughly to produce a detailed—sometimes dramatic, sometimes humdrum—account of the drama. The abundant sources prove to be both a boon and a shortcoming: Not all of the 104 witnesses who testified during the trial were compelling; nor were some issues—such as Barnes’ “alleged involvement in printing industry corruption,” which occupied the court for many days. The highlight of the trial—and of this book—was the week that Roosevelt, “an explosion of energy,” took the stand. As the New York Press reported, Roosevelt dominated the courtroom “with that marvelous personality of his and has won more friends in Syracuse than he made at any particular time.” After more than 38 hours of questioning, heckled by the plaintiff’s lawyers, who tried to goad him into anger, he emerged “smiling and happy and ready for more,” stepping down from the stand and grinning at the jury. The trial was not the only news: War was brewing in Europe, and President Woodrow Wilson strained to keep America out of the fray. Roosevelt strongly urged engagement, a stand that worried his lawyers, who were fearful of alienating several jurors of German descent. Roosevelt held back from criticizing Germany—until the sinking of the Lusitania, “piracy accompanied by murder,” he said, impelled him to urge America’s immediate entry into the war.
A feisty Roosevelt takes center stage in a mostly lively history.Pub Date: May 21, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-335-01644-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 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
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
