A fine, objective portrait in paradox, shrewdly detailing how Jefferson Davis's character flaws rendered him woefully unsuited to be President of the Confederacy. The author (no relation to his subject) brings to bear the military acumen one might expect from a former editor of Civil War Times Illustrated and author of more than 25 books on the Civil War and southern history, including Duel Between the First Ironclads and The Battle of New Market (both 1975). Yet his discussion of strategy is also informed by a firm grasp of Davis's extremes of character. It seemed logical in 1861 that the South would turn to Davis. He was, after all, its major military hero (as a colonel in the Mexican War, he helped win the Battle of Buena Vista); the natural successor to John Calhoun as the Senate's chief States'- rights advocate; and, under President Franklin Pierce, one of the most innovative secretaries of war ever. Yet, as early as his two courts-martial while a West Point cadet and army lieutenant, Davis manifested negative traits that proved fatal as a chief executive: anger, pedantry, vanity, indecision, and, as his future second wife noted after their very first meeting, an overbearing ``way of taking for granted that everybody agrees with him.'' He had the diligence and intelligence of a bureaucrat, but none of the interpersonal skills of a politician. Author Davis examines how these strengths and weaknesses affected the Confederate leader's relationships with his strong-willed second wife, Varina, and his mentor, brother Joseph; his unusually benevolent treatment of slaves; and his mismanagement of the western theater of operations, aggravated by petty squabbling with Generals Pierre Beauregard and Joseph Johnstone and foolish loyalty to incompetents like Braxton Bragg and Leonidas Polk. A dispassionate, well-researched, and skillful biography of a complex and controversial figure. (Sixteen pages of b&w illustrations—not seen.)
Pub Date: Dec. 4, 1991
ISBN: 0-06-016706-8
Page Count: 792
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1991
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
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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