A rousing vision, though it’s hard to see where childless people fit into Kaufman’s otherwise inclusive and timely arguments.
A longtime gender equality activist and masculinity studies scholar argues that women are not the only victims of patriarchy.
Kaufman has written or edited numerous books on gender equality, including The Guy’s Guide to Feminism, co-authored with Michael Kimmel. Without denying the obvious privilege that men enjoy in a sexist world—e.g., as a man, Kaufman admits, he doesn’t have to worry that his boss will automatically assume he can’t go on a work trip because of family demands—Kaufman insists that ideals of masculinity present men with a script no one can follow and that “men pay a terrible price for the very ways we define manhood and construct men’s lives within societies where we have more power.” Therefore, men should take feminism and gender equity seriously: “It turns out that gender equality will mean that our lives as men will be changed for the better, too.” In particular, they should embrace caregiving for children, which would be positive for women, who, in a world where everyone was both an involved parent and a good worker, might not be viewed first as mothers by their bosses. Certainly, it would be good for children, who do better if they have involved fathers. Here, Kaufman takes pains to note that these benefits do not mean fathers are “necessarily unique or indispensable,” so that his arguments can’t be plucked up by those who would denounce single or lesbian mothers. Furthermore, writes the author, engaged fathers say they feel happier and more mature, complete, and secure than less-engaged fathers. More speculatively, Kaufman proposes that, because caregiving fosters empathy, it’s possible that men would become less violent. Achieving a co-parenting utopia is, of course, not just a matter of men deciding to read more bedtime stories to their children. Policy changes are crucial, and the author offers a few suggestions, including the introduction of flexible parental leave with “non-transferable daddy days.”
A rousing vision, though it’s hard to see where childless people fit into Kaufman’s otherwise inclusive and timely arguments.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64009-119-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: Dec. 3, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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