Too long by half but consistently readable—an impressive work that will provide grist for the former president’s detractors...
An exhaustive epic of Barack Obama’s trajectory to the presidency.
Yes, Obama was born in Hawaii, in the United States, just as his birth certificate says. Yes, he smoked marijuana. Yes, he has been a person of overarching ambition with a coolness that often shades into iciness, an island of unnerving calm in the stormy sea of electoral politics. As he has demonstrated in previous books, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Garrow (Law and History/Univ. of Pittsburgh School of Law; Liberty and Sexuality: The Right to Privacy and the Making of Roe v. Wade, 1994, etc.) is a demon for research. The present volume, which weighs in at more than 1,400 pages (including nearly 275 pages of notes), is based on more than 1,000 interviews and consultations, it seems, with every known document to deal with the matter of the 44th president. Sometimes the book feels like too much of a good thing. While it is useful to know that Michelle Obama has a strong personality, it’s not necessary to have repeated demonstrations of that strength—though it did afford columnists the wherewithal to accuse her of emasculating her husband, who in turn has seemed relatively emotionless. It is not entirely clear how Garrow feels about his subject except that his own overarching thesis would seem to rest on the idea that Obama—Garrow calls him “Barack,” familiarly, throughout—was an efficient creator of himself, having gone from sometimes-frivolous youth to preternaturally serious adult with a clear vision of his path to success. Yet, as the author writes in closing, “while the crucible of self-creation had produced an ironclad will, the vessel was hollow at its core.” Leaving aside the psychobiographical speculations, however, the core of this book is eminently solid, a thorough turning over of just about every stone, from the poor behavior of Obama’s father in the U.S. to the sound and fury of Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers.
Too long by half but consistently readable—an impressive work that will provide grist for the former president’s detractors and admirers alike.Pub Date: May 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-264183-0
Page Count: 1472
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
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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