A vivacious ride through the life of a doctor.
Distinguished cardiologist and prolific author Zipes (Not Just a Game, 2016, etc.) describes an adventuresome life and career.
In an engaging opening chapter, the author chronicles his travels to Moscow in the early 1980s for a cardiology conference. It sets the tone for this memoir, which relates a series of ordeals that tested his moral fortitude and his conscience as a medical professional. While in Russia for the World Congress of Cardiology, he was immediately confronted by ‘refuseniks’—locals forbidden from emigrating—who begged him to lecture to their disbanded group. This led to the author being surveilled by the KGB and a sudden blacklisting that made traveling back to Russia dangerous. Zipes also shares an anecdote about the first Russian exchange scientist to arrive in Indianapolis to participate in scientific electrophysiology research. The author’s natural knack for storytelling is shown off best when he backtracks to his youth in Westchester County, New York, where he enjoyed his share of youthful shenanigans, despite a strict upbringing. Zipes also attempts to uncover the genesis of his fiercely contrary nature in the face of naysayers. He tells how he always defiantly paved his own way, despite a school counselor who argued against him applying to Ivy League colleges (he excelled at Dartmouth, where he met his future wife, Joan) and senior physicians who advised him not to become a consultant for the medical device industry. A medical school internship and a cardiology fellowship preceded two years in the Navy, fierce medical litigation against pharmaceutical companies, and a house call to visit a wealthy patient in Saudi Arabia. Throughout this book, Zipes employs a smooth combination of humor and unfettered enthusiasm. As the title suggests, he effectively shows how he ignored negative advice and discouraging criticism to emerge victorious in various fields, including fiction writing. Clinical professionals, authors, and anyone else with the same zest for life that the author has will find much delight and inspiration in this unique, spirited memoir.
A vivacious ride through the life of a doctor.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5320-3313-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
© 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.
