A book in which Kaag further carves out his niche in philosophy: personal, practical, and crucial.
A biography and exegesis of William James that serves as self-help for the philosophically inclined.
In his latest, Kaag (Philosophy/Univ. of Massachusetts, Lowell; Hiking With Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are, 2018, etc.) notes that he began this book worse off than during his two previous philosophical memoirs. He was in the middle of a divorce, “had just watched my estranged, alcoholic father die,” and was spending much of his time in bed sleeping and reading James. That activity, however, isn’t a symptom of depression the way reading Schopenhauer might be. For Kaag, it proved to be a vital salve. “I think William James’s philosophy saved my life. Or, more accurately, it encouraged me to not be afraid of life.” If so, it wouldn’t be the first life James saved. His entire philosophy, writes the author, “from beginning to end, was geared to save a life, his life.” In this brief treatise, Kaag seeks to “offer the reader James’s existential life preserver.” This represents something of a formal departure for Kaag. Whereas American Philosophy and Hiking With Nietzsche were philosophical memoirs, this book is self-help philosophy that draws selectively from autobiography. This inversion makes it a more demanding text than its predecessors. If readers are to gather solace from James, it will come only from joining Kaag in thinking through his philosophy: responding to the challenge of scientific determinism; reflecting on the paradox of James’ famous assertion that “my first act of free will shall be to believe in free will”; and attempting to pluck the thorn of relativism from pragmatism’s side. Luckily, Kaag’s reading of James is as elucidating as readers have come to expect from him. Once again, he writes in a clear, focused, and winningly self-aware style that makes friends of James and himself for anyone who wonders if life is worth living.
A book in which Kaag further carves out his niche in philosophy: personal, practical, and crucial.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-691-19216-1
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
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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