A rape victim's compelling story is combined here with a provocative examination of the issues raised by the crime from the perspectives of the victim, her husband, the counselor who treated her at a rape crisis center, the prosecutor and defense attorney in the case, and the newspaper editor who brought the story to national prominence. Early on the morning of November 19th, 1988, Ziegenmeyer, a 28-year-old wife and mother of three, was on her way to a local Des Moines school to take an exam for her real-estate license when she was assaulted in the school's parking lot and forced to drive her assailant to a secluded spot, where he raped her. The months that followed brought about Ziegenmeyer's transformation from a cringing, traumatized victim who had to have her husband walk with her to the bathroom in the middle of the night into an avid crusader for victims' rights. The trial of her assailant was postponed four times, to Ziegenmeyer's frustration, as his attorneys challenged the new technique of DNA identification in semen, the prosecution's main weapon in the case. Ziegenmeyer dealt with her rage and impatience by contacting the Des Moines Register; after the rapist's conviction, the newspaper's series thrust Ziegenmeyer into the spotlight of local and national attention. She was flown around the country to appear on talk shows, and she spoke at victims'-rights assemblies, lawyers' conventions, and, finally, before the US Senate. Ziegenmeyer comes across as a feisty, smart, ordinary woman, warts and all, who throughout her ordeal has retained the good sense of her Iowa farm upbringing. And coauthor Warren, a former Esquire editor, has done a fine job of interweaving the voices of the other principals in the case. Skip Eileen Ross's Savage Shadows (p. 1458) and look to this for insight into a rape victim's experience and the way she courageously used it to raise consciousness about this form of violence. (Film rights sold to CBS-TV.)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-671-73455-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1991
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
PERSPECTIVES
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
SEEN & HEARD
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