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WHEN WOMEN RULED THE WORLD

Name: WHEN WOMEN RULED THE WORLD
Author: Kara Cooney
ISBN: 978-1-4262-1977-1

SIX QUEENS OF EGYPT

by Kara Cooney ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 6, 2018

Cooney provides welcome insights into pharaonic politics while bringing numerous little-known Egyptian women to the fore.

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An accessible spin through the corridors of power in ancient Egypt, corridors that converged on thrones on which women reigned.

You wouldn’t know it to read the standard survey texts, but the history of ancient Egypt is punctuated by periods of rule by women—and more of them than just Nefertiti and Cleopatra. Cooney (Egyptology/UCLA; The Woman Who Would Be King: Hatshepsut's Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt, 2014) digs into the tombs, papyri, and literature to look at the past of a polity that, though “no less cruel and oppressive to women than every other complex society on Earth,” was not programmatically opposed to the notion that women could rule. Most of these women were on the throne for relatively short periods, often because they stood in when male heirs to the throne were too young or otherwise unable to assume it. One, Merneith, ruled without formal title as regent for one such too-young son; we know little about her largely because “the Egyptians, it seems, never wanted to directly state that the king’s mother was calling the shots.” When her son hit 16 or 17, she continued to advise him behind the scenes. As Cooney notes, it was the last such unacknowledged rule; other women who followed on the throne bore the title “king.” One regent, Hatshepsut, connected to the venerable and powerful bloodline of the 18th Dynasty, was herself only 16 when she ascended the throne, having outlived a number of unlucky brothers (and avoided being married off to one of them, which would have made her queen). The author makes it clear that these female kings could be as tough, and sometimes as sanguinary, as their male counterparts; if forgotten, most were also skillful. The most famous, Cleopatra, was an exception, for Cooney reckons her a failure, having tied her fortunes too closely to a man, if one whose record has also been tarnished by “the Roman misinformation and propaganda campaign against her.”

Cooney provides welcome insights into pharaonic politics while bringing numerous little-known Egyptian women to the fore.

Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-4262-1977-1

Page Count: 400

Publisher: National Geographic

Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

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Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.