Solid overall, as crystal-ball geopolitical treatises go, though with enough hedging to allow for a broad range of outcomes.
It’s only a matter of time, writes longtime Russia hand Lourie (A Hatred for Tulips, 2007, etc.), before Vladimir Putin oversteps his bounds and his imperial project comes tumbling down. Or is it?
There are large questions tucked away inside this provocative book, which posits that Putin’s Russia will not long endure in its present iteration. Rather, it will become a more democratic power, or perhaps a more despotic one, perhaps richer or perhaps “no more than China’s gas station and lumberyard.” The author imagines, for instance, a scenario in which the president of Kazakhstan passes away suddenly, leaving a vacuum of power in a region now contested by several state powers, to say nothing of Islamists who will already have enlisted the support of China’s Uighur population. One likely outcome might be that Russia, as it did with the Crimea, would annex Kazakhstan in order to protect the minority Russian population, dealing along the way with the Uighurs, an accidental favor to China. In all this, the balance of power would shift in Russia’s favor—and all because Russia has never been averse to showing force. For all that, writes Lourie, Russia is already showing signs of weakness; he sees in Putin’s recent formation of a kind of army-within-the-army Praetorian guard a nervousness, a fear, while he finds in Russia’s scramble for the Arctic another kind of vulnerability, since “without Western investment, equipment, and expertise, [the Arctic will be] much more difficult to exploit.” Of course, many other writers have predicted Putin’s downfall, and the man has to die sometime. The author does give Putin credit for a few positive accomplishments, and the author assesses a few potential replacements, including Alexei Navalny, a youngish opposition candidate who has publicly characterized Putin’s party as “the party of crooks and thieves” and gotten much traction for it.
Solid overall, as crystal-ball geopolitical treatises go, though with enough hedging to allow for a broad range of outcomes.Pub Date: July 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-312-53808-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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