Another bio of the flamboyant astronomer and creator of Cosmos (see William Poundstone, p. 1391), from a veteran science writer (coauthor with George Smoot of Wrinkles in Time, 1993). Davidson credits Sagan’s influential Intelligent Life in the Universe, a collaboration with Russian astronomer I.S. Shklovskii, with awakening his own interest in science. He recognizes Sagan as a great popularizer, one of the preeminent translators of scientific ideas into the vernacular of his day. At the same time, he clearly distrusts the myth that Sagan often seemed to personify, that of the scientist as a sort of modern high priest, omniscient and above the fray. In this spirit, the biography often seems to be recounting Sagan’s career with an eye to undercutting that myth, if not necessarily the man himself. Thus the digs at Big Science, where political acumen counts for as much as research ability; the quotation of derogatory remarks from Sagan’s former friends (e.g., Harold Blum, who called his prose style “phony”); and hints that there were deep-seated irrational elements behind the cool surface of Sagan’s science. Sagan was clearly a man who made enemies as easily as friends, and Davidson has sought out both camps. The resulting portrait is not so much a debunking of Sagan, however, as a highlighting of certain qualities that might have increased his popular appeal. The “nuclear winter” episode, in which Sagan and several colleagues argued that even a “limited” nuclear war might lead to the extermination of human life, showed Sagan as an eminent scientific expert, paradoxically arguing that the issues involved were too important to leave to the experts. Likewise, in many ways Sagan’s constant advocacy of the search for life beyond Earth—the central science-fictional dream—was a key to the space program’s becoming hard reality. In the end, Davidson argues, Sagan’s influence in such matters may count for more than any of his books. A smoothly written, sometimes critical look at a leading scientific figure of our time.
Pub Date: Sept. 24, 1999
ISBN: 0-471-25286-7
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Wiley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1999
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
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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