An entertaining and warmly human history.
A study of how various nonprofits have brought about progressive change in the state of Vermont, as told through the story of a former nurse and foundation founder.
Wilhelm anchors his account of the varied work of Vermont foundations and other nonprofit organizations by focusing on the inspiring story of Claire Lintilhac. She moved to the state in 1958 after having received training as a nurse providing various maternity services for poor people in China. She brought this hard-won experience to Fletcher Allen Health Care, Vermont’s largest hospital at the time, and her later creation, the Lintilhac Foundation, which focuses on a range of health and environmental issues. She went on to work with other nonprofits on causes involving land conservation, responsible journalism, and many other topics—including, most centrally, maternity and child health care concerns. Wilhelm goes into granular detail about the history of the foundation’s early years and personal stories of those associated with it; he also shades in Lintilhac’s own personality, giving the book a prominent emotional element: “There was something radiant about her,” says Mary Gibson, a nurse who worked with her. “She just emanated compassion and kindness.” The narrative broadens to chronicle the spread of natural-childbirth advocacy in Vermont, among other issues. Although Wilhelm spends a bit too much time on Lintilhac’s personal story, he makes the rest of the book feel winningly personal, with engaging profiles and affecting black-and-white photos from various sources. Wilhelm also does a smooth, confident job of extending his story into unlikely corners of state history, as when he provides an account of Benedict Arnold’s lost gunboats.
An entertaining and warmly human history.Pub Date: March 29, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-57869-082-4
Page Count: 310
Publisher: Rootstock Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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