An intermittently engaging biography of a logistics genius whose behind-the-scenes influence did as much to win the war as...
A journalist documents the achievements of an unsung Union hero of the Civil War.
Here’s a challenge: write a riveting story about a general whose military contribution involved procuring rather than leading troops gloriously into battle. That’s the task Washington Post reporter O’Harrow (No Place to Hide: Behind the Scenes of Our Emerging Surveillance Society, 2005, etc.) assumes in this biography of Montgomery C. Meigs (1816-1892), Quartermaster General of the Army during and after the Civil War. An abolitionist, Meigs graduated from West Point and became a brevet second lieutenant in the Army Corps of Engineers. Before the Civil War, he supervised the construction of the Washington Aqueduct, the dome of the U.S. Capitol, and Union Arch Bridge in Maryland. He was just the sort of experienced manager that newly elected Abraham Lincoln needed as his quartermaster, the person responsible for getting clothing, blankets, horses, food, and ammunition to the troops. “There is no glamour in this,” O’Harrow notes. Unfortunately, he makes it even less glamorous in the book’s prewar first half, with dry chapters that read like a catalog of activities rather than a dramatic story. Passages in which Meigs manages payroll and signs requisitions for candles, sponges, and sperm oil aren’t exactly page-turners. Much better are the sections on the Civil War, in which the author cites his subject’s innovations, such as his adoption of the Singer sewing machine to help the Union Army “surmount the limitations of an industry in which seamstresses stitched most clothing by hand.” The writing is more vivid in these sections, too, as when Meigs, who had traveled to Manassas during the first Battle of Bull Run, learns that a cannon shot “had recently decapitated two Union soldiers” and says that the flying shells were like “someone was tossing paving stones at me.”
An intermittently engaging biography of a logistics genius whose behind-the-scenes influence did as much to win the war as that of most military commanders.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4516-7192-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
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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