Kaag's lively prose, acute self-examination, unfolding romance, and instructive history of philosophy as a discipline make...
A compelling hybrid combining memoir, a dramatic narrative about saving an endangered rare book collection, and the intellectual history of philosophy.
Previously the author of academic tomes (Thinking Through the Imagination: Aesthetics in Human Cognition, 2014, etc.), Kaag (Philosophy/Univ. of Massachusetts, Lowell) recognized a path to writing about philosophy for a general audience by building the story around his unexpected discovery of perhaps 10,000 books in a neglected building on the rural New Hampshire estate of William Ernest Hocking, a deceased Harvard University philosophy professor, and his wife. The first time Kaag entered the estate guided by an acquaintance, he viewed the cohesive collection of rare books in an unsecured building via trespassing. Later, Kaag received permission from the Hocking daughters, who had never cataloged the rare book collection painstakingly built by their parents. The author’s discovery came at a juncture of severe personal depression as a postdoctoral scholar at Harvard. His problematic father had died, his youthful marriage was unraveling, and he was obsessed with the question "Is life worth living?" presented most vividly by William James, “the father of American psychology and philosophy.” By throwing himself into the salvation of the invaluable Hocking collection, Kaag found an affirmative answer to the question, grappled with the death of his sometimes-hated father, filed for divorce, and, as a touching bonus, fell in love with a female academic colleague who had also divorced. That colleague, Carol Hay, joined Kaag on the New Hampshire estate to help save the rare books. Kaag and Hay married in 2011 and later became parents. Some of the books sold at auctions, and others were donated to libraries and archives with climate controls to aid preservation. Throughout the book, the author deftly intertwines the narrative threads in a story perfect for book lovers and soul searchers alike.
Kaag's lively prose, acute self-examination, unfolding romance, and instructive history of philosophy as a discipline make for a surprisingly absorbing book.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-374-15448-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
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
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