Twists and turns that rival a well-plotted detective story, complete with a surprise ending.
A provocative meditation on the implications of scientific theories about genetic determinism.
Beginning with the National Book Award–winning Slaves in the Family (1998), Ball has written four books (Peninsula of Lies: A True Story of Mysterious Birth and Taboo Love, 2004, etc.) centered in Charleston, S.C., the home base of his father’s family. In his latest, he tries to uncover the truth about his origins with the help of cutting-edge genetic science. He questions whether the carefully preserved records of Ball family genealogy tell the whole truth. When he accidentally discovers nine small packets of hair in the secret drawer of a family heirloom that has recently come into his possession, he decides to submit samples for genetic analysis, along with his own hair and that of two cousins. The hair packets were apparently collected as treasured mementos over a 175-year period ending in the 1850s. Ball takes them to several forensic laboratories, which mainly deal with crime-scene evidence but are also equipped to look at “ancient” hair. Much of the book describes the methodology employed by these labs. Ball also delves into the science of genetics, which adds another dimension to the tale. He is most interested in probing his racial history, and the results he receives are at first glance surprising. This leads him to consult anthropologists who study population migrations by identifying variations in the genotype of people of Asian, African and European descent. His quest to discover more about the origins of his family leads the author to examine deeper questions about the extent to which personal identity may or may not be determined genetically. He wonders whether our reliance on science is perhaps too uncritical.
Twists and turns that rival a well-plotted detective story, complete with a surprise ending.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-7432-6658-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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