Impassioned but often strained.
Probing the mystery of love.
Journalist and critic Rosenbaum, author of The Shakespeare Wars, among other books, contends that there is a fierce battle going on “for the soul of love.” He argues that it is under threat from a variety of fronts, including “brain-scan neuroscientists and their media popularizers”; “simpering pop philosophers”; “neo-Marxist dialectical materialists,” who see love as transactional; pop psychologists who consider love to be a “drive” rather than an emotion; the pornography industry; and, surprisingly, literary theorists. While scientists try to define love as a quantifiable chemical reaction, literary theorists seek to “historicize” love as an imaginative “construct,” positing that “the language of love is what has actually created love.” Rosenbaum is passionately offended by these efforts and devotes himself to defending love “as an irreducible ontological entity,” far different from the propositions emanating “from pseudoscience and sophistry.” Readers who don’t share his outrage may find his response overwrought. He focuses much ire on Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist who has been called the “Queen of Love Science,” whose findings have been widely publicized. Basing her conclusions on fMRI scans, Fisher explains love as chemistry. She has analyzed individuals’ “trait constellations” to conclude that there are “chemical types that determine who you can or should fall in love with.” Rosenbaum finds that conclusion preposterous; love, he asserts, “is not an algorithm.” The author draws on a wide range of sources—including philosophy (Plato, Thomas Nagel), poetry (Sappho, Shakespeare, Larkin, Yeats, Auden), and fiction (Lev and Sofiya Tolstoy, Austen, David Foster Wallace, and Chekhov, among others)—to make the case that love is “evanescent and contingent and unpredictable.” His own history of love bears out that conviction, and part of his motivation for exploring the meaning of love, he reveals, has been finding, finally, the love of his life. “Love,” he is certain, “is a kind of entanglement between two consciousnesses.”
Impassioned but often strained.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2023
ISBN: 9780385536554
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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