A literate, intelligent evocation of the great heavyweight champion. Remnick (Resurrection, 1997, etc.), the Pulitzer Prize winner who is now editor of the New Yorker, opens—wisely—with the September 1962 fight between Floyd Patterson and Sonny Liston. His profiles of both men are remarkable studies of the sociological backdrop for Ali’s entrance upon the scene. Patterson was cast as the good, humble Negro aligned with God; Liston, an ex-con who worked as an enforcer for the mob, as the big, bad, scary black. The brash, poetry-spouting Cassius Clay (as he was still known) fit neither stereotype. Despite his 1960 Olympic gold medal, his obvious speed, and his boxing skills, sportswriters hated the impudent young fighter. He was “considered . . . little more than a light-hitting loudmouth.” Clay was no one’s pick to steal the title from the overpowering Liston. Remick does a fantastic job of setting the stage for that February 1964 fight, noting that even Clay’s people had their doubts: One insider merely hoped “that Clay wouldn’t get hurt.” The jabbering, taunting Clay pummeled the plodding, dispirited Liston, who simply quit after the sixth round. It was shortly after the fight that Ali’s association with the Nation of Islam was revealed. His friendship with Malcolm X and his espousal of the Black Muslim creed, along with his promotional rantings of “I am the greatest!,” did not endear him to the public. But he kept winning, beating Liston yet again in 1965 in the most controversial hit in heavyweight history. Remnick’s reenactment of that one-punch, “phantom punch” knockout in the first round is brilliant. Remnick tails off with Ali’s 1967 refusal of the military draft and his subsequent suspension, not going into quite enough depth to explain Ali’s virtual canonization by the American press and public. But no matter: This is a great look at “a warrior who came to symbolize love.” (16 pages b&w photos, not seen) (Author tour)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-375-50065-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1998
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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