An important contribution to modern French history.
The riveting tale of an episode, hardly known to Americans, that continues to affect French life and politics and raises profound moral issues.
One of the most searing moments of modern French history came after the liberation of Paris in 1944. The time to settle scores—between the defeated Vichy government, together with its French collaborators, and members of the Resistance and De Gaulle's liberating army, as well as the survivors and ghosts of French Jewry—had arrived. And that moment was encapsulated in the treason trial, conviction, and execution of the mordant anti-Semitic writer and Nazi sympathizer Robert Brasillach. Kaplan (Romance Studies/Duke Univ.; French Lessons: A Memoir, 1993) focuses her resonant work on the enduring question of the responsibility of writers and intellectuals to their societies. For the French, then and still debating their responsibility for Vichy and the extermination of thousands of French Jews, the question in 1944 was whether one can commit "political treason in writing, rather than in action.'' Kaplan's study, the first based upon all available sources, successfully resolves distortions in the earlier historical record and makes clear beyond all doubt Brasillach's role in inducing others to send innocents to their graves. Equally important, she exhumes the lives and roles of Brasillach's prosecutor and defense attorney, as well as the members of the jury that convicted him. With exemplary balance, she gives all their due (although, inexcusably, there are no photos, not even of the main characters). In the end, she judges Brasillach's execution an error because his martyrdom still fuels the French far right. But surely Albert Camus, no friend of collaborators, had the stronger and more noble case: that Brasillach's death was immoral because all capital punishment is immoral.
An important contribution to modern French history.Pub Date: April 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-226-42414-6
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2000
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
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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