Timely and politically spot-on, this is sure to be a popular title.
A far-reaching history that directly addresses the “misogynist’s handbook” that still plagues women in power.
From Cleopatra and Anne Boleyn to Theresa May and Hillary Clinton, Herman, author of Sex With Kings and Sex With Presidents, addresses the long history of double-standard practices that troublingly persist today. Why do men—and other women—wish to tear down ambitious, intelligent, accomplished women in positions of power, while often treating men in the same positions with deference? “In each woman’s story,” writes the author, “I discovered organized smear operations churning out unfounded accusations of sexual improprieties and criticisms of her ambition, untrustworthiness, appearance, and unlikability, accusations rarely made about male leaders either in the first century BCE or today.” Herman methodically sifts through these often false accusations, most of which follow the “misogynist’s handbook,” which was crafted to “enforce the Patriarchy, a concept so towering it must be capitalized.” In a typically amusing passage, the author writes about a “clear pattern of vilification across the millennia and throughout history to bring down powerful individuals suffering from chronic no-penis syndrome.” She shows how misogyny usually involves a fear of women’s bodies as life-giving forces and the male need to eclipse and harness that mysterious power for their own purposes, and she underscores how many religious traditions emanated from that need to control. Using enlightening humor as well as righteous, well-founded frustration and anger, Herman effectively deconstructs the tendency of men to focus on hair, voice, clothing, and body type rather than pertinent qualifications and accomplishments. Not content to merely call out these biases, the author advocates for the importance of electing more women to public office and getting men to stand up for women in the face of sexism. With chapter titles like “The Alarming Shrillness of Her Voice,” “She’s a Bitch and Other Animals,” and “Additional Tools To Diminish Her,” the text offers a nice balance of serious inquiry and well-placed levity.
Timely and politically spot-on, this is sure to be a popular title.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-309567-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
A slick, vacuous glimpse into the former first lady’s White House years.
A carefully curated personal portrait.
First ladies’ roles have evolved significantly in recent decades. Their memoirs typically reflect a spectrum of ambition and interests, offering insights into their values and personal lives. Melania Trump, however, stands out as exceptionally private and elusive. Her ultra-lean account attempts to shed light on her public duties, initiatives, and causes as first lady, and it defends certain actions like her controversial “I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?” jacket. The statement was directed at the media, not the border situation, she claims. Yet the book provides scant detail about her personal orbit or day-to-day interactions. The memoir opens with her well-known Slovenian origin story, successful modeling career, and whirlwind romance with Donald Trump, culminating in their 2005 marriage, followed by a snapshot of Election Day 2016: “Each time we were together that day, I was impressed by his calm.…This man is remarkably confident under pressure.” Once in the White House, Melania Trump describes her functions and numerous public events at home and abroad, which she asserts were more accomplished than media representations suggested. However, she rarely shares any personal interactions beyond close family ties, notably her affection for her son, Barron, and her sister, Ines. And of course she lavishes praise on her husband. Minimal anecdotes about White House or cabinet staff are included, and she carefully defuses her rumored tensions with Trump’s adult children, blandly stating, “While we may share the same last name, each of us is distinct with our own aspirations and paths to follow.” Although Melania’s desire to support causes related to children’s and women’s welfare feels authentic, the overall tenor of her memoir seems aimed at painting a glimmering portrait of her husband and her role, likely with an eye toward the forthcoming election.
A slick, vacuous glimpse into the former first lady’s White House years.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9781510782693
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
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
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