In the right hands, this book is reassuring, enlightening, and inspiring; in others, it’s OK to skim.
The "Woman Woman" turns her attention to the problems of men, particularly in their youth.
Moran is known for her nonfiction books about womanhood and feminism, including How To Be a Woman. Her latest is inspired by the notion, expressed by her teenage daughters' male friends, among other sources, that these days, it's easier to be a woman than a man. "If boys, and men, really feel this—if they observe that there is more discussion, support, cheerleading and belief in girls, and women—then I believe them. You have to believe people when they keep saying the same thing, over and over, more despairingly each time." In chapters with such titles as "The Conversations of Men," "The Cocks and Balls of Men," "The Friendships of Men," "The Oldness of Men," this very funny writer addresses the dearth of discussion and support for men's problems, applying a sympathetic eye, research techniques of the ask-around and Google varieties, and a conventional but still widely applicable model of gender. For example, men are apparently afraid to talk in detail about their penises, which is why "only 25 percent of men with erectile dysfunction seek medical treatment. Four in ten cases of prostate cancer are only detected when they reach stage three or four. Thirty percent of men are unhappy about the size of their penises." Maybe this wouldn't happen if they had learned to actually converse instead of banter and boast. Moran wants to put an end to the silence that surrounds boys' often traumatizing experiences with pornography, and she has sharp words for Neil Strauss, Jordan B. Peterson, and Andrew Tate. If you don't know who those people are, you are not the author’s target reader. In fact, it's not completely clear who that might be—boys? girls? parents? men?—and this is reflected in some fluctuations of tone, focus, and interestingness.
In the right hands, this book is reassuring, enlightening, and inspiring; in others, it’s OK to skim.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780062893741
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2023
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
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