Anthony Fauci's memoir reaches back to his boyhood in Brooklyn, New York, and carries through decades of caring for critically ill patients, navigating the whirlpools of Washington politics, and behind-the-scenes advising and negotiating with seven presidents on key issues from global AIDS relief to infectious disease preparedness at home.
A well-pressed gray flannel suit of a book with a white coat buttoned over it: a calm reply to deranged calls for this distinguished public servant’s head on a pike. Is it measured and methodical in sections? Sure. So is science ... Despite the help of a collaborator, Linda Kulman, stories like this are somewhat diluted by bureaucratese ... Fauci has earned a victory lap. He easily clears the hurdles thrown up by his detractors; his eyes stay trained on the finish line, not the commotion in the bleachers.
Eventful ... The relative dearth of intimate writing in this memoir feels apt: For decades, Fauci subordinated his own concerns to the two roles he assumed in the ’80s as a dispassionate scientist and a public servant accountable to the people ... Fauci is not temperamentally inclined toward radicalism — he is mild and measured for much of the book, going so far as to extend perhaps too much courtesy to the likes of Bush and Dick Cheney — but there are moments when competence and conscientiousness are revolutionary.
It is telling that his memoir is less dominated by recent events than one might expect ... The book... presents an implicit demand for us to see Fauci’s career whole, from medical training to retirement ... Parts of the book were obviously written with an eye to the ongoing scrutiny of the government’s handling of the pandemic. He is open, if a little general, about things that went wrong ... He is vociferous about the way that the lab-leak theory has been used to erode confidence in public-health provisions.
