Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 26, 1993 TAG: 9302260495
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
BOOKS IN BRIEF
The Puzzle People: Memoirs of a Transplant Surgeon.By Thomas E. Starzl. University of Pittsburgh Press. $24.95.
"Puzzle People" refers to a remark by an interviewer to the author, suggesting that some day soon patients could be reconstituted with organs (kidney, liver, heart, lungs, pancreas, etc.) from many donors much as one puts the pieces of a puzzle together. Thomas Starzl, M.D., is justly renowned in scientific medicine for his contributions to kidney transplantation, and in larger part for his pioneering work in liver transplantation. Now in retirement of sorts - he no longer operates - Starzl has written a recollection that encompasses his childhood, his medical education and training and mostly the trail that led finally to successful liver transplantation.
Starzl's reputation is unchallenged. His vigor, initiative and creative ingenuity have seen to that. But, fortunately, his reputation doesn't rest on this book. Even as a physician with more than a passing interest in the field, I found the story's chronology confusing at times, the depth of discussion of ethical issues disappointingly shallow and the quality of the prose inadequate to the task. The story is better than this telling of it. The book needs an editor or, better yet, a ghost writer with a pencil as sharp as Starzl's scalpel.
- SIDNEY BARRITT
The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy.
By David Kopel. Prometheus Books. (price not listed).
Mention gun control to any cross-section of the American population and a rapid polarization akin to oil and water is almost guaranteed. No single social issue, save abortion, has split American thought more than limiting access to firearms. In this academic-oriented book written under the imprint of the Cato Institute, David Kopel examines how guns have been handled in other countries including Japan, Great Britain, New Zealand and Canada. What he discovers, not surprisingly, is that the acceptance of government control on firearms is based on the importance of firearms in the history and culture of the country.
In those countries where firearms have no great historical significance, no great opposition exists to the controls. In those countries where firearms have played a major role in history - the United States is one of them - firearms control is not accepted gracefully. So what is Kopel's answer to gun control in this country? Again not surprisingly, he recommends promoting responsible gun ownership over any legal bar to owning firearms. Much ado about nothing.
- LARRY SHIELD
Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer.
By John Mack Faragher. Holt. $27.50.
Ask any schoolchild of 50 years ago about Daniel Boone and all kinds of definitions would have emerged: bear killer, Indian fighter, explorer, settler, soldier, hero.
Well, times change. The idea of an "Indian fighter" being considered a hero, or even worth study, would set some a-twittering in their branches, beset by righteous wrath. Thus, the banishment of Boone. Fortunately, John Mack Faragher has come forth with a marvelously readable new biography - one long overdue - of a Boone who was surely a hero by the timeless measures that are applied to courage, and even more so by the standards of American expansion that marked the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
This is the Boone who was politician, adventurer and speculator; who saw two sons, a brother and a grandson killed by Indians; who had a daughter captured by them; who was captured twice himself and wounded at least once. This was also the Boone who opened the way to the West when the West was the Kentucky he helped settle, and the way there was the Cumberland Gap. He was a man of myth and mystery, as Faragher freely admits, one whose popularity was small indeed in this country until an early biography filled with hyperbole created a sensation in Europe. Faragher's book is highly readable, well- and professionally done.
- ROBERT HILLDRUP
Sidney Barritt is a Roanoke physician.\ Larry Shield writes software.\ Robert Hilldrup is a Richmond writer and former newspaperman.