A useful resource for scholars and students of gender studies and cultural anthropology.
A sometimes-belabored but mostly accessible argument that male domination is a cultural and not biological imperative.
Why have men held disproportionate power across societies and millennia? British science journalist Saini, author of Superior: The Return of Race Science, combs through the archaeological and anthropological literature to examine leading theories. While patriarchy is widely seen in both human societies and the animal kingdom, there is plenty of variation in both realms, including greater or lesser degrees of inequality and of women’s participation in leadership. While some scientists—almost always men—have insisted that the patriarchy is the natural outgrowth of the biological fact that men are larger and stronger, the evidence more broadly points to cultural constraints. Usefully, Saini resurrects the once-forgotten work of anthropologist Marija Gimbutas, who examined Neolithic societies to adduce an “old Europe” centered on goddess worship and gender parity—until it was conquered by a warrior society from the Eurasian steppes. This hypothesis of migration and submission was long disputed, but, as Saini notes, “remnants of ancient DNA point to the likelihood that it did happen,” perhaps 4,500 years ago, when Stonehenge was built. Gimbutas has not been the only scholar to point to times, mostly ancient, when women’s roles were far higher up in the social hierarchy, as in the dynasties of ancient Mesopotamia and the traditions across later centuries of female warriors. Interestingly, Saini brings these traditions to the present by examining the supposed gender equality instilled by the Bolshevik Revolution, which, though largely undone (and now officially disavowed by the Putin regime), did witness the phenomenon of more than 800,000 Soviet women fighting alongside men in World War II. From start to finish, Saini sounds a constant theme: “As far back as we can see, humans have landed on rainbows of different ways of organizing themselves, always negotiating the rules around gender and its meaning. Nothing was static.”
A useful resource for scholars and students of gender studies and cultural anthropology.Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2023
ISBN: 9780807014547
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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