A vigorous, often inspiring account of women’s quests for economic equality.
A history of women’s struggles for economic rights and financial freedom.
Focusing on the period from World War II until the present, journalist and broadcaster Cox explores women’s progress in the fight for economic equality. The author zeroes in on the personal and professional stories of those who were especially influential in this history, along with a look at “what ultimately went wrong; why, fifty and sixty years ago, progress seemed abundant with promise and why now, in 2024, it appears to have stalled so dramatically.” A clear strength of the book is Cox’s attention to the contributions of lesser-known figures in the liberation movement as she chronicles in revealing detail the significance of “unsung heroes” such as Alice Paul, Pauli Murray, Shirley Chisholm, Lindy Boggs, and Muriel Siebert. The author’s commentary on Murray’s life is particularly astute; she not only highlights her extraordinary achievements as an activist on behalf of women and people of color, but also illuminates the often intersecting goals and strategies of the feminist and Civil Rights movements. Cox persuasively argues that contemporary understandings of intersectionality are deeply indebted to Murray’s work. Also memorable is the discussion of the development and wide-ranging impact of the birth control pill. The emergence of the pill at the beginning of the 1960s was the culmination of long-standing efforts on the political, legal, and scientific fronts to secure reproductive freedoms, and its economic ramifications were enormous. A major obstacle standing in the way of equality today, the author ultimately demonstrates, can be found in the striking gap between women’s and men’s pay across a range of professions. That gap, research shows, “has hardly budged for years.” Cox offers an accessible and instructive overview of how money and power have intersected with gender in modern America.
A vigorous, often inspiring account of women’s quests for economic equality.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781419762987
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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
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