An approachable consideration of an unexamined aspect of the failed war on drugs.
Intriguing social chronicle of the DARE anti-drug education program.
Felker-Kantor builds on prior work on policing with an account of the stealthy rise and fall of DARE, which began in Los Angeles in 1983 under aggressive chief Daryl Gates. While often ridiculed, the once-ubiquitous DARE programs, which featured officers in uniform as “teachers,” normalized the presence of police in everyday life. “DARE attempted to give the police a human face,” writes the author, “while simultaneously expanding the scorched-earth policing” of the drug war. Felker-Kantor takes an evenhanded approach, showing how DARE benefited many parties, attracting support from educators, politicians, and donors, as well as police officers who emphasized their bonding experiences with schoolchildren. Early on, few noticed how it concealed the racialized mechanics of “zero tolerance” prohibition and normalized the unnecessary presence of police in schools. In the 1980s, DARE expanded in line with the Reagan era’s conservatism, which “placed the family, personal responsibility, and morality at the crux of the drug war.” The author documents how DARE accrued political power as it was franchised nationwide, becoming a nonprofit in 1987, while gaining corporate sponsors and a merchandising arm. “By the mid-1990s, DARE had become a cultural icon of its own,” writes the author, while ignoring the structural roots of drug abuse and how middle-class suburban students’ experience with the program diverged from that of students from marginalized communities. Yet pushback accrued by the late 1990s, due to both parental backlash and studies suggesting the program did not influence behavior. “The continued attention DARE received, whether praise or mocking, demonstrated the deep impact the program had on American society, politics, and culture,” writes the author. While his central points can be repetitive, his straightforward account of DARE’s insidiously authoritarian growth is insightful and instructive.
An approachable consideration of an unexamined aspect of the failed war on drugs.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781469679044
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Univ. of North Carolina
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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