by Lisa Wade ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 10, 2017
An eye-opening, conversation-starting examination of sex on the American college campus.
How and why American college students are engaging in nonintimate one-night stands.
Although students on college campuses profess to be having a lot of sex, according to Wade’s (Sociology/Occidental Coll.; co-author: Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions, 2014, etc.) research, “today’s students boast no more sexual partners than their parents did at their age.” The difference is the culture surrounding the intimacy, a topic the author thoroughly and perceptively explores. Using in-depth research and multiple surveys from hetero, bi, trans, and queer students of all ethnic and economic levels from colleges across the country, Wade delves into the new hookup culture, which allows students access to sex but can leave them feeling anxious, depressed, and overwhelmed. It comes as no surprise that drunkenness and sex often go hand in hand, that many students feel they would not be able to have sex with just anybody without the alcohol, and that the hookup often starts on the fraternity party dance floor. What is surprising is the intentional lack of emotions allowed after the sexual encounter has taken place, with students deliberately acting cold toward each other after sex. Since no one wants to be tied down or viewed as clingy, needy, or desperate, all partners act as if the other person doesn’t exist, which leads to doubts about why the hookup happened in the first place. Wade does a solid job explaining the pros and cons of this new culture and includes historical data that shows how it evolved from the shift in family dynamics following the Industrial Revolution. The most interesting perspectives come from the journal entries written by students, in which they admit to wanting an emotionally charged relationship with someone but don’t want the stigma of being “uncool” or of losing the opportunity to “live their sexual lives freely.”
An eye-opening, conversation-starting examination of sex on the American college campus.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-393-28509-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
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by Howard Zinn ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1979
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
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by Howard Zinn ; adapted by Rebecca Stefoff with by Ed Morales
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by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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