A thoughtful and engaging history lesson.
A history professor examines a woman’s court fight to restore her violated sexual honor in 1790s America.
In 1793, a seamstress named Lanah Sawyer was raped by Harry Bedlow, “an elite sexual predator” who posed as a lawyer to gain her trust. In this incisive historical investigation, Sweet, a history professor at the University of North Carolina and former director of its program in sexuality studies, reconstructs a memorable story that reveals the virulent anti-feminism embedded in American democracy. Sawyer had the spotless reputation society required of all “decent” women; Sweet notes that any fall from grace would plunge her into “a world of scandal and shame from which she might never emerge.” Despite her lower status as a working-class woman, Sawyer sought legal reparations. “Even if others couldn’t see past her social station, her work as a sewing girl, Lanah Sawyer could,” writes Sweet. “She felt she had a right to a revolutionary dream of human equality. Other dreamers, too, were crushed in these years. Some of them, like her, had the courage to fight back.” In the contentious trial that followed, Bedlow was cast as the victim of Sawyer’s wiles. Newspapers debates begun by elite women emphasized the sexual double standard, but a male backlash against “disorderly women”—e.g., the owner of the bawdy house where Bedlow raped Sawyer—overwhelmed those voices. Ultimately, Sawyer’s stepfather successfully sued Bedlow for seduction—i.e., for breaching his right to give consent to intercourse with his daughter. “In seduction suits,” writes Sweet, “the question of consent was hardly mentioned, much less disputed. Jurors—and everyone else involved—generally took the woman’s father at his word.” This carefully researched book will appeal to historians, feminist scholars, and anyone with an interest in narratives that chronicle female erasure in a social system created by and for the benefit of (White) men.
A thoughtful and engaging history lesson.Pub Date: July 19, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-76196-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
A sharp, entertaining view of the news media from one of its star players.
The veteran newscaster reflects on her triumphs and hardships, both professional and private.
In this eagerly anticipated memoir, Couric (b. 1957) transforms the events of her long, illustrious career into an immensely readable story—a legacy-preserving exercise, for sure, yet judiciously polished and insightful, several notches above the fray of typical celebrity memoirs. The narrative unfolds through a series of lean chapters as she recounts the many career ascendency steps that led to her massively successful run on the Today Show and comparably disappointing stints as CBS Evening News anchor, talk show host, and Yahoo’s Global News Anchor. On the personal front, the author is candid in her recollections about her midlife adventures in the dating scene and deeply sorrowful and affecting regarding the experience of losing her husband to colon cancer as well as the deaths of other beloved family members, including her sister and parents. Throughout, Couric maintains a sharp yet cool-headed perspective on the broadcast news industry and its many outsized personalities and even how her celebrated role has diminished in recent years. “It’s AN ADJUSTMENT when the white-hot spotlight moves on,” she writes. “The ego gratification of being the It girl is intoxicating (toxic being the root of the word). When that starts to fade, it takes some getting used to—at least it did for me.” Readers who can recall when network news coverage and morning shows were not only relevant, but powerfully influential forces will be particularly drawn to Couric’s insights as she tracks how the media has evolved over recent decades and reflects on the negative effects of the increasing shift away from reliable sources of informed news coverage. The author also discusses recent important cultural and social revolutions, casting light on issues of race and sexual orientation, sexism, and the predatory behavior that led to the #MeToo movement. In that vein, she expresses her disillusionment with former co-host and friend Matt Lauer.
A sharp, entertaining view of the news media from one of its star players.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-316-53586-1
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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