The biographer of the Brooklyn Bridge and the Panama Canal has written a marvelous book, now, about the making of an exceptional being—and nothing that has appeared before, including Edmund Morris' recent The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, diminishes its interest or freshness or emotional force. Indeed, those familiar with the story of the puny, sickly boy who made himself over by will power alone have the most to look forward to. That is not, for one thing, what McCullough found in the thousands of Roosevelt family letters. But he does not merely offer another, more complex and fine-tuned interpretation; he has embedded it in the true-life equivalent of a Russian novel of relations and generations, of mood and moment (whence those "mornings on horseback" at Oyster Bay) and shaded characterization. Here is Theodore Roosevelt, Sr.—"a great bearded figure of a man. . . readily touched by the sufferings of others." New York gentleman; newsboys' friend; foe of venal politicians. His forever-Southern, forever-young wife Mittie, "Little Mama"—whose heroic tales conveyed "a sense of bloodline kinship with real-life men of action." Her brother James Bulloch—builder of the celebrated Confederate raider Alabama, no less admirable to his proUnion nephew. Older sister Bamie, "Papa's pet"—plain, stooped, bright, absolutely dependable. Responsible, as a tiny, stricken child, for the family conviction "that physical well-being and mental outlook are directly correlated." Younger brother Elliott—serene, kind-hearted; long the bigger of the two, and the better athlete. (His "strange seizures," beginning at 14, will reverse their positions; and with Ellie's drinking and descent, one awaits with pity and dread the birth of his daughter Eleanor.) And frail, asthmatic, intent, untiring "Teedie." McCullough devotes a chapter to childhood asthma—the total, terrifying agony, the exuberance afterward; the immediate, "exciting" family response, especially in privileged circumstances; the timing of the attacks—in TR's case, on Saturday nights, gaining him joyful Sundays out-of-doors with Papa; the sense of power and. with it, a sense that "life is quite literally a battle." At 13, TR acquires a gun and a pair of glasses; through an idyllic winter in Egypt, he shoots and stuffs birds; there are no asthmatic attacks. Ellie's seizures begin—TR is pulling ahead academically. He goes off to Harvard, "his first solo venture into the world," still spindly—despite his bodybuilding exercises—and still squeaky-voiced. The asthma all but vanishes. There follows: his father's political defeat (to be avenged?), and his death; TR's second, newly-popular two years at Harvard, capped by the conquest of "bewitching," Mittie-like Alice Lee; his high-charged political novitiate, and sobering introduction (by Samuel Gompers) to poverty; two sudden, terrible deaths—Mama's and Alice's; work (and silence); the distressing nomination of Blaine, whom TR will nonetheless support, knowing his father would have done differently. The book culminates, in the "Bad Land years," with his discovery of the cowboy—whose code was akin to the family code and who could also deal with death. His body fills out, his voice deepens, his speech takes on eloquence; he doesn't seem surprised when an acquaintance predicts that he'll become President. All of McCullough's considerable gifts—as scholar, analyst, dramatist—are focused on an inexhaustible subject.a
Pub Date: June 22, 1981
ISBN: 0671447548
Page Count: 486
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1981
IN THE NEWS
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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