Humor abounds in this semicheeky examination of the pink world of princesses and little girls.
The tale of “a small and very cute princess-obsessed little girl and a mother who learned how to Let It Go.”
Before New York Times parenting columnist Blachor had children, she was convinced she would never let any daughter she had become a girly girl who was absolutely consumed with the color pink and with the traditional Disney-fied portrayal of what a girl should be. Then her daughter, Mari, turned 3 and became obsessed with everything the author wanted to avoid. With a certain amount of mortification, Blachor watched her daughter transform, and she learned certain lessons about parenthood along the way. “There was a lesson to learn if I could only suspend my princess and pink resistance long enough to pay attention to more meaningful issues,” she writes. “There was an opportunity to figure something out about parenthood and my need to control.” Blachor's descriptions of what happened with Mari are primarily tongue-in-cheek, but she does include a hefty portion of seriousness as she ponders the ramifications for girls and women who embrace the beauty-fashion-color ideals readily portrayed in social media, news media, and particularly through the Disney franchise. By analyzing her daughter's clear obsession, the author was able to identify the points that bothered her the most and begrudgingly and humorously came to grips with them. She shares her insights in a variety of methods, often through lists under the titles "opposite of serious” or "interesting little princess facts." Readers who have a little girl infatuated with pink or who wants to be a princess will enjoy Blachor's uneven but pleasant book for its humor and the understanding that they are not the only ones dealing with similar situations. A final chapter presents a survey featuring a series of teenage perspectives from “young women who once identified as ‘princess-obsessed little girls.’ ”
Humor abounds in this semicheeky examination of the pink world of princesses and little girls.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-14-313035-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: TarcherPerigee
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2017
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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