An amusing diversion.
A look at bewildering behavioral patterns of the English.
Though he’s a critic for the London Sunday Times as well as a travel writer (A.A. Gill is Away, 2005), the London-based author is Scottish, a fact he mentions as often as possible in an attempt to separate himself from the peculiar creatures he writes about. Chapter headings like “Class,” “Sport,” “Gardens” and “Queues” give some idea of matters covered in this “collection of prejudice,” as Gill points out evidence of “anger…the thing that seems impermeably English.” The book, a series of comical vignettes, provides many hilarious examples of inexplicable angry outbursts from the English, and while the logic behind these eruptions may sometimes be baffling, in Gill’s hands they’re uproariously funny. One encounter with an English couple he met while on vacation got off to a bad start when the author, thinking they were annoyed to no longer be the only Brits staying in their hotel, immediately apologized to them for his presence. The baffled couple couldn’t figure out why he was apologizing, and the comedy of errors that ensued ultimately led to Gill apologizing for his apology—he claims there’s nothing the English like less than being apologized to for no apparent reason. Make a note.
An amusing diversion.Pub Date: June 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4165-3173-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2007
Anthropologist Kitzinger's (Women as Mothers, 1979) dreary picture of the current state of motherhood in the West leaves one wondering why anyone bothers anymore. New mothers, she says, are devalued by society and perhaps by themselves, prey to the exhortations of the medical establishment and so-called parenting experts, and plied by the media with images of unattainably perfect motherhood. She contrasts the West, where medicalized birth is ``depersonalized,'' with traditional cultures, where childbirth remains a ``social act.'' No doubt a society, such as ours, that still views motherhood as a deviation from the norm needs some attitude adjustment. But the question still seems open as to whether a woman would rather have prenatal care in the form of regular, if alienating visits to the obstetrician or in the form of exhortations, made to Jamaican women, not to drink soursop juice to avoid excessive labor pain. Kitzinger provides an unusual and enlightening tour of mothering practices around the world, from India to Zambia, Israel, and China. She is suggesting that we combine the best of mothering traditions from pre-and post- industrial societies—but how to accomplish it must be the subject of another book.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-201-40776-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Addison-Wesley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
Though the administration may be remembered as the worst in American history, the people seem mostly silent. One wishes that...
New York Times columnist Rich delivers a savaging sermon on the US government’s “rampant cronyism, the empty sloganeering of ‘compassionate conservativism,’ the reckless lack of planning for all government operations except tax cuts”—and so much more.
Anyone who knows his work will know that Rich is no fan of either George Bush, a man “not conversant with reality as most Americans had experienced it,” or the Bush administration. In this blend of journalism and mentalités-style history—that is, the study of the mindsets that underlie and produce events—Rich looks closely and critically at the White House’s greatest hits, from the 2001 defense of gas-guzzling as essential to the American way of life to “Heckuva job, Brownie” to the ongoing morass of Iraq. By Rich’s account, of course, that parade of missteps is organic; Bush and company cannot help but err. In an effort to disguise that track record, the Republicans have exercised single-minded control of the grand narrative of the last five years, at least in part because they have exercised quasi-totalitarian control over the news media. (They are nearly forgotten already, but one needs to remember Judith Miller, Jeff Gannon, Karen Ryan and various columnists and commentators paid off to repeat the party line.) Not for nothing did a White House adviser reveal to one journalist that his bosses were set on creating their “own reality,” one that all Americans were expected to share; not for nothing did that reality include spinning amazing lies about everything from the death of football- and war hero Pat Tillman to the kidnapping of Jessica Lynch to the government’s preparedness for Katrina. And yet, and yet . . .
Though the administration may be remembered as the worst in American history, the people seem mostly silent. One wishes that Rich had explored that particular mentalité along with the others he so fluently discusses.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2006
ISBN: 1-59420-098-X
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2006
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