A thin, mostly secondhand portrait of a misguided doctor and the harm he caused his famous clientele.
JFK, his rogue doctor and the conspiracy to kill a meth-addicted president.
Lertzman and Birnes (The Everything UFO Book, 2012, etc.) attempt an exposé about Dr. Max Jacobson, aka Dr. Feelgood, who treated a host of famous patients from JFK to Truman Capote. His treatments, or “vitamin shots,” were primarily made up of amphetamines with the addition of often-experimental ingredients like animal hormones. The authors focus on the relationship between JFK and Jacobson, claiming that Jacobson traveled regularly with the president, was often summoned to the White House and was even asked by Kennedy to move in. Using personal interviews with several people once close to the doctor and his patients, as well as quoting from previous books on the subject, the authors spin a tale of widespread drug addiction at the hands of Jacobson. They describe some notable incidents that occurred while Kennedy was in a meth-induced state, including his debate with Nixon, his meeting Khrushchev at the Vienna Summit in 1961 and, eventually, an overdose at the Carlyle Hotel during which the president had to be subdued. The book strays at times from the Kennedy story to describe Jacobson’s treatment of patients like Marilyn Monroe, actor Robert Cummings and Cecil B. DeMille, with whom Jacobson traveled extensively. As the authors admit, there have been many books written about Jacobson and his connection to the rich and famous. It’s hard to tell what sets this one apart, although Lertzman and Birnes do offer a lengthy aside detailing the doctor’s upbringing, medical training and emigration to the United States after the Holocaust. Perhaps most interesting is the ending, where the authors assert that Jacobson was indirectly responsible for JFK’s death. The president’s growing amphetamine addiction, they claim, was seen by the CIA as a serious threat to national security. The book concludes with a rehashing of familiar conspiracy theories regarding the Warren Commission.
A thin, mostly secondhand portrait of a misguided doctor and the harm he caused his famous clientele.Pub Date: May 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-62087-589-6
Page Count: 204
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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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