Wonky, as befits the author, but a smart look at not just his life, but also our times.
Diplomat, activist, and former presidential candidate Kerry (A Call to Service: My Vision for a Better America, 2003, etc.) recounts a long life of national service.
First came the Swift boat, then the swift boating. The author explains the title, in relation to his service in Vietnam, as “an expression of gratitude for survival where others did not make it.” Of that experience, Kerry quietly notes, “I can’t say it was a process devoid of moral hazards.” Those hazards, in turn, prompted Kerry to turn against the war, running for Congress as an anti-war candidate even as he was still in uniform, helped along by an understanding admiral. The author evinces some bitterness on the whole matter of the war, and especially Robert McNamara, one of its architects, who “left the battlefield to slink off to the World Bank” and was never adequately called to task for his crimes. Kerry writes ably of the sausage-making aspects of politics, noting the importance of crossing the aisle to actually get things done, as when he and John McCain fought against bête noire Ted Sampley, “a self-appointed POW activist who sold T-shirts, flags, and newsletters on the Mall…[and who] profited grossly from the myth that prisoners were still being held in tiger cages in Vietnam.” Sampley would return in the swift boating business that cost Kerry votes in the presidential run of 2004—but less so, the author suggests, than voter fraud in Ohio: “I wonder how many countries have elections in which machines are privately owned and controlled,” he writes, “where the coding for tallying cannot be inspected or verified because it is ‘proprietary information.’ " Given that such books often signal a political campaign in the offing, one wonders whether Kerry is contemplating another run for office—despite protestations to the contrary. Whatever the case, this memoir makes for fine reading for politics junkies, especially those with an interest in how policy is made.
Wonky, as befits the author, but a smart look at not just his life, but also our times.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-7895-5
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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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