A vivid set of inquiries into the science, social history, and personal experience of adolescence.
Exploring an anxious age.
Each year, now, seems to have its own identity: tots, tweens, teens, young adults. Each generation has rewritten codes of growing up: boomers, millennials, X, Y, Z, Alpha. Into this mix, adolescence has emerged as a distinctive category—a time not bounded by chronology but by sensibility. The adolescent is a rebel: No I won’t. The adolescent is a questioner: Who am I? The adolescent is a blamer: It’s all your fault. The latest book by New York Times journalist Richtel (A Deadly Wandering, An Elegant Defense) offers a cultural history of this stage through a series of short chapters focusing on problems, possibilities, and individuals. This is not a book of science or sociology. It’s a book of storytelling. We get vignettes of Napoleon reading Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther, becoming, in effect, a case of arrested adolescent development; of the psychologist G. Stanley Hall, who wrote the first real medical account of adolescence in 1905; of modern neurologists mapping the youthful brain; and of a clutch of today’s kids, each of whom has a tough life worth telling. In the end, adolescence is revealed to be “by evolutionary design a period of risk-taking, and of diversification….Diversity and exploration [are] essential for surviving in an unpredictable world.” Adolescence, then, becomes the key moment of personal growth, when we reject or accept social norms and adult expectations. These days, that moment involves confrontations with anxiety and depression, eating disorders and desires, and the judgments of social media. It’s a hero’s journey, both for child and parent. Written in a colorful, journalistic style, this book should be at the bedside of every parent who believes they are alone but really aren’t.
A vivid set of inquiries into the science, social history, and personal experience of adolescence.Pub Date: July 8, 2025
ISBN: 9780063282063
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2025
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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