One of those sports biographies that transcends sports.
A baseball icon, as never before portrayed.
Gehrig’s losing struggle with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) offers one of the saddest and most poignant instances of a popular athlete dying young in sports history. This tragic battle was so public that ALS is now popularly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Countless biographies of Gehrig (1903–41) have focused mainly on his illness and his stupendous record of 2,130 consecutive games played, which earned the well-loved New York Yankee the nickname Iron Horse. Wall Street Journal writer Eig chronicles the illness and marvels at the record, of course, but he’s not content merely to retell a familiar story. The author digs deeper, uncovering 200 pages of previously unpublished correspondence to and from the ballplayer and interviewing hundreds of people, including over 30 former players who knew him well. This research pays off handsomely as lesser-known aspects of Gehrig’s life become more prominent, including his childhood in New York City and his close relationship with his mother. The reader also learns about the surprisingly bad blood between Gehrig and Babe Ruth, supposedly due to a sexual infidelity. With these rich details, Eig crafts a portrait that goes far beyond the usual rendering of the doomed ballplayer as a tragic soul who bravely endured, “poor Lou” stoically soldiering on until his death. Yes, Gehrig is depicted as a man who faced death without complaint, but he’s also outstandingly portrayed as a fallible man with faults and peccadilloes. Eig’s highly readable account brings uncommon humanity to a legendary, golden sports hero.
One of those sports biographies that transcends sports.Pub Date: April 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7432-4591-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2005
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
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
