A diverting autobiography by the 1960 Olympic decathlon champion, told with equal parts grace, humility, and candor. Johnson’s story is set up in ten chapters, each representing an event in the decathlon and bearing titles such as “Clearing the Hurdle” and “Vaulting High, Falling Far.” Born in 1935 in Texas, he grew up In Kingsburg, Calif.,, a small town not far from Fresno. He was attracted to track, in part, he says, “because the sport did not involve one-on-one physical confrontation or attempts to do harm to opponents.” Fresh out of high school in 1953, he started doing well in national meets, placing just behind Olympians like Bob Richards. A young black man, he attended UCLA because of the school’s “proud long-standing commitment to racial equality” and because he felt a special affinity for Coach Elvin “Ducky” Drake. Johnson won the decathlon at the 1955 Pan Am Games, setting a new record in his first international competition. His sights were on Olympic gold, though injuries forced him to settle for silver at Melbourne in 1956. He would reach the pinnacle at the1960 Rome Olympics in an intense competition with his good friend C.K. Yang of Taiwan. Johnson’s insights and descriptions of the decathlon events are a highlight of the book. Following his athletic career, Johnson appeared in a number of Hollywood films (without distinction), worked for People to People and the Peace Corps, served as a sports reporter for NBC, and was hired as an affirmative-action consultant by Continental Telephone, where he became a vice president. Always one to be involved, Johnson was a member of Robert F. Kennedy’s entourage and was present when the senator was assassinated. He offers a riveting account of that event, of helping to wrestle Sirhan Sirhan to the floor and prying the gun from his hands. Never an ego-driven man, Johnson is perhaps the most undervalued, underpublicized sports hero in recent memory. (8 pages b&w photos, not seen) (Author tour)
Pub Date: Aug. 17, 1998
ISBN: 0-385-48760-6
Page Count: 276
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1998
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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