Next book

TOO FAT, TOO SLUTTY, TOO LOUD

THE RISE AND REIGN OF THE UNRULY WOMAN

A sharp, compelling collection of social and cultural criticism.

A BuzzFeed culture writer examines how some high-profile women defy cultural stereotypes about femininity.

Donald Trump’s recent election as president marked “the beginning of a backlash [against women] that has been quietly brewing for years. Petersen (Scandals of Classic Hollywood, 2014) offers thought-provoking profiles of controversial women who “question, interrogate or otherwise challenge the status quo.” She opens with tennis star Serena Williams, who defied the sport that made her famous not only by being black, but also by “her body…her personality, her resilience and her fortitude.” While winning championships and lucrative endorsements, Williams has also had to fight against tennis’ “double standard of decorum” that gives more room to male players to display their anger on the court than it does women. Like Williams, perennial rebel Madonna is also known for her outspokenness and daring. But as she approaches her 60th birthday, ageism has become an issue. Rather than accede to cultural norms and gradually withdraw from public life, however, “Oldanna” dares to make the statement that an aging female body can still be “sexual, powerful and visible,” despite the fact she built her career on celebrating youth and beauty. Among the most problematic of all the women Petersen examines is Caitlyn Jenner. In her pre-transition life as the ultra-masculine Bruce Jenner, she was the father of a famous reality TV family. Since her much-heralded coming out, she has adopted a culturally palatable mode of femininity, which she has coupled with a desire to deepen her understanding of gender nonconformity. But as the author points out, “Jenner’s openness” to such explorations has come at a cost, including low ratings for and the eventual cancellation of her reality TV show. Through incisive analysis of the ways in which contemporary society polices femininity, Petersen reveals the fraught relationship between women and celebrity. The author also profiles Melissa McCarthy, Hillary Clinton, and Lena Dunham, among others.

A sharp, compelling collection of social and cultural criticism.

Pub Date: June 20, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-399-57685-0

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Plume

Review Posted Online: April 3, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017

Next book

A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979

ISBN: 0061965588

Page Count: 772

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 23


Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


Google Rating

  • google rating
  • google rating
  • google rating
  • google rating
  • google rating

  • Kirkus Reviews'
    Best Books Of 2016


  • New York Times Bestseller


  • Pulitzer Prize Finalist

Next book

WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR

A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 23


Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


Google Rating

  • google rating
  • google rating
  • google rating
  • google rating
  • google rating

  • Kirkus Reviews'
    Best Books Of 2016


  • New York Times Bestseller


  • Pulitzer Prize Finalist

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

Close Quickview