In other words, it takes all kinds. Another entertaining book from Garfield.
Garfield (Timekeepers: How the World Became Obsessed with Time, 2018, etc.) turns his attention to models and miniatures and other small things that grab and reward our attention.
“At its simplest, the miniature shows us how to see, learn and appreciate more with less,” concludes the author, following a tour of the world of miniatures that has encompassed model railroads (Rod Stewart and Neil Young are enthusiasts), model boats (including slave ships, which somehow magnify the horror), model houses, and even miniature towns and cities. The size and scale are less important than the relationship of standing for something bigger, so the author also discusses hotels on the Las Vegas strip, including the Bellagio, the Venetian, and Paris. “The more one speaks to those who have adopted Vegas as their home,” he writes, “the more one hears talk of Europe as the phantom and Vegas as the real deal.” Garfield begins and ends with the Eiffel Tower—not because of its impressive architecture or the perspective on the city it affords but because “the opening of the tower marked the birth of the mass-consumed souvenir and the dawn of the factory-made scale model.” Consequently, others were inspired to build their own, including one constructed of 11,000 toothpicks that took approximately 300 hours to build. As much history as the author provides, he seems even more interested in human psychology: Why would someone spend so much time and effort to construct something that is ultimately without purpose, and why would others flock to see it? Garfield devotes a lot of attention to the ideal of order in a world of chaos while recognizing that the obsession can seem insane. Yet, as he writes of a man who has devoted much of his life to constructing a fleet of matchstick ships, “his dinner guests scoff that his work is pointless, but he’s happier in his world than they may ever be in theirs.”
In other words, it takes all kinds. Another entertaining book from Garfield.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9958-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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