A touching portrait of a complex and tortured soul, written by his brother. Abbie Hoffman, one of the best-known radicals of the 1960s, kept in almost daily contact with his kid brother, Jack, even during his days of hiding as a fugitive. With the help of Four Walls Eight Windows copublisher Simon, Jack now chronicles their relationship and his brother's life. From humble Russian-Jewish origins, they were the sons of a long-suffering father, whom they compared to Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, and a mother best described as eccentric. Experimenting with drugs and gradually becoming politicized, Abbie joined SNCC in 1964 and helped raise funds for their Freedom Summer efforts. Later he founded the Youth International Party (the Yippies) with Jerry Rubin and organized the protests against the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. He established himself as the clown prince of the counterculture, writing Revolution for the Hell of It and Steal This Book. The humor with which he approached the Chicago 7 conspiracy trial and his appearance before HUAC is vividly depicted. His continuing drug use and experimentation led to his arrest in 1973 on cocaine charges. Abbie went underground for almost seven years. Hiding first in Mexico, he later returned to the US, living in upstate New York under the alias Barry Freed. Unable to stay out of politics, he became a noted environmental activist. He also battled manic-depression. In 1980, he reemerged and surrendered to authorities; after about a year in prison, he was paroled. He became increasingly depressed, however, and drugs and alcohol only compounded the problem. He took his own life in 1989. These events are well known, and Jack Hoffman is curiously removed from the story he tells. He elaborates little, if at all, on how it felt to be the younger brother of such a notorious figure, as if he were still content to remain in Abbie's lingering shadow. Nevertheless, this is the forceful story of an American original.
Pub Date: Sept. 21, 1994
ISBN: 0-87477-760-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: TarcherPerigee
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
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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