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In the latest of a spate of books on his legacy, Ellis (History/Mount Holyoke Coll.; Passionate Sage, 1993) argues that Thomas Jefferson was neither the saintly hero of myth nor the devious hypocrite depicted by some revisionist studies, but a protean character whose complex qualities evoke the best and worst aspects of our history and culture. Ellis notes that, unlike the largely forgotten John Adams, Jefferson is an iconic figure who maintains a continuing symbolic significance for modern Americans, either as an apostle of democracy or as an exemplar of the racism that has disfigured American history. Studying five crucial periods in his life, Ellis traces the unique mix of the brilliant and the fallible in Jefferson's character. We see him in turn as the young, sensitive, high-strung drafter of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia in 1776; a seasoned diplomat in Paris in 178489; a gentleman farmer (179497); a besieged president (180104); and finally, an elder statesman (181626). Ellis points out that Jefferson's career had disasters as well as successes. He was, for instance, a failure as governor of Virginia (his administration left the state's economy in shambles). He also argues that Jefferson's thought cannot easily be taken out of its historical context. Crucial aspects of his outlook have been outmoded by time: Such concepts as slavery, states' rights, and the primacy of the agrarian in American life were wiped out by the Civil War. The growth of a multicultural society and the development of a culture of equal rights for minorities and women undermined his vision of an Anglo-Saxon society dominated by men. Nonetheless, Ellis asserts that there are enduring aspects of Jefferson's legacy—including his emphasis on individual rights, an abhorrence of centralized government, and a belief in the necessity for religious freedom- -that continue to shape our political culture today. A thoughtful and respectful, but not worshipful, reassessment of the enduring meaning of Jefferson's life and work. (History Book Club main selection)
None NonePub Date: Jan. 31, 1997
ISBN: 0-679-44490-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1997
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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