At its most obvious, this is the first half of a rather bland biography of Eisenhower—partly from primary sources, but adding nothing consequential to the record—by a practiced hand and staunch admirer: to Ambrose, Eisenhower was "a great and good man," "one of the great captains of military history," and "one of the most successful presidents of the twentieth century." As a practical matter, much of it approximates a condensation of Ambrose's 1970 account of Eisenhower's WW II role, The Supreme Commander—from which many passages are taken—with the addition of material on Mamie (from Letters to Mamie), Kay Summersby (from her two books), and son John (from his memoirs); once again, too, Ambrose purports to be recreating events from Eisenhower's point of view—now with a "personal" component. In the last analysis, however, the Eisenhower we see—sedulously avoiding controversy, for instance, from 1930s Washington to WW II France to the presidency (and McCarthy)—is not very different from the figure portrayed in Peter Lyon's sophisticated interpretive biography or by military historians. Apropos of the earlier years, Ambrose offers a kind of split image—stressing (almost mechanically) the narrowness of Eisenhower's family-and-Abilene background, his rote learning at West Point, the US military's suspicion of politicians (particularly during the interwar period). And though he moots Eisenhower's wrong-side-of-the-tracks upbringing (insightfully examined by others), he does make subsequent reference to "buried feelings of jealousy and bitterness, like those of his childhood"; though he makes much of Eisenhower's unbroken attachment to Mamie, he does depict her querulousness as a trial (and suggests, reasonably enough, that Ike might have been in love with Kay too). On the war itself, he details "how often and how seriously Eisenhower botched things in North Africa" (from the Darlan deal to Kasserine Pass); justifies Eisenhower's selection for command of Overlord on the basis of his ability to direct combined British-American operations (not "his generalship, which in truth had been cautious and hesitant"); and takes full note of his crucial "desire to appease" Montgomery and Patton—leading to some of the war's "great mistakes" (like the failure to quickly take Antwerp and perhaps end hostilities in 1944). Still later, Ambrose notes that Eisenhower was "ashamed" of not having defended Marshall against McCarthy's charges in the 1952 campaign. None of this, however, differs from the historical consensus—nor does Ambrose's defense of Eisenhower's end-of-war decision not to race the Russians to Berlin. What he adds is a glaze of veneration: Eisenhower is a great man, and a great military captain, and prospectively a great president, because he had great human qualities—above all, the "self-confidence" that inspired trust in wartime and impelled him to seek the presidency ("He knew that he was smarter, more experienced, and had better principles than his competitors. . ."). A curious formulation, but one that will likely appeal—as the book will—to others who feel as Ambrose does.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1983
ISBN: 0671440691
Page Count: 648
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1983
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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
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