A fine distillation.
A portrait in brief of a remarkable scholar/philosopher/physician of the 12th century, and an examination of the long tradition of Jewish healing.
In this second volume in the Jewish Encounters series, Nuland, a surgeon and NBA-winning author (How We Die, 1994, etc.), sketches the religious and political tensions of the time, chronicling the Maimon family’s wanderings around the Mediterranean in search of a place to live. Moses ben Maimon, better known as Maimonides, settled in Islamic Egypt, where his driving purpose was preservation of the Jewish community, a task demanding strong leadership. As a young man, Maimondes became the spiritual leader of Jews in Saladin’s kingdom and the foremost scholar of his time. Nuland sifts out the facts from the many legends and myths surrounding Maimonides, and for readers unfamiliar with Jewish traditions, carefully explains the significance of his major religious works, which incorporate science and philosophy into religious thought. Maimonides possessed a remarkable mind for observing and interpreting the world, and a powerful talent for collecting, codifying and clarifying. If the portrait of the man himself is hazy, Nuland cannot be blamed, for details of Maimonides’ personal and family life are obscure. What is known is that tradition forbade him from making a living as a rabbi, and when his brother’s ship was lost at sea, taking the family fortune with it, Maimonides turned to the practice of medicine for income. Already a prominent public figure, he was soon made a physician in Saladdin’s court. Nuland concludes that Maimonides, who inspired centuries of Jewish physicians, should be revered for his devotion to the Jewish people and the progressive worldview he brought to theology. An appendix briefly discusses his medical writings.
A fine distillation.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2005
ISBN: 0-8052-4200-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Schocken
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
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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