New York Times Magazine journalist Heard uncovers some truly memorable manifestations of millennial fervor in this quasi-ethnography. There’s the Pentecostal Mississippi dairy farmer who believes that his all-red heifer is a sign that a new temple will be established in Jerusalem, ushering in the endtime; there is also the Israeli rabbi who, with similar millennial expectations, traveled to America to check out the “apocalypse cow.” There are the radical “Gaiaists” who claim that Mother Nature has grown tired of humanity’s abuses and is about to unleash a series of cataclysms to kick us off the planet; these followers plan to be the only ones prepared to survive earth’s attack. Heard calls these well-meaning survivalists “Swiss Family Robinson with a Rambo complex.” Then there are the UFO “contactee” groups, including the southern California—based (where else?) Unarians, who await the 2001 arrival of the “tall, wise, and kindly Space Brothers,” benevolent beings sent to assist earthlings on the road to enlightenment. If there’s a surprising thread among these groups, it’s that most of them are looking forward to the apocalypse. Not all are prophets of doom; many are just ordinary folks who expect to greet the coming age with great joy. Heard does a fine job of outlining some of the paradoxes of their widely variant forms of prophecy belief. His writing is as crisp and snappy as the book’s title, though a few of his assertions aren—t fully supported by his research. (Some facts also need checking, such as his claim that “hundreds” died in the Oklahoma City blast.) Heard comes down rather unsympathetically on many of his interviewees, repeatedly utilizing pejorative and uninformative words like “hoodoo” to describe their millennial beliefs. Still, on balance, he gives their social grievances an eloquent airing. Overall, a humorous and well-written attempt to understand our ongoing fascination with the apocalypse.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-393-04689-3
Page Count: 254
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
The author’s sincere sermon—at times analytical, at times hortatory—remains a hopeful one.
New York Times columnist Brooks (The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character and Achievement, 2011, etc.) returns with another volume that walks the thin line between self-help and cultural criticism.
Sandwiched between his introduction and conclusion are eight chapters that profile exemplars (Samuel Johnson and Michel de Montaigne are textual roommates) whose lives can, in Brooks’ view, show us the light. Given the author’s conservative bent in his column, readers may be surprised to discover that his cast includes some notable leftists, including Frances Perkins, Dorothy Day, and A. Philip Randolph. (Also included are Gens. Eisenhower and Marshall, Augustine, and George Eliot.) Throughout the book, Brooks’ pattern is fairly consistent: he sketches each individual’s life, highlighting struggles won and weaknesses overcome (or not), and extracts lessons for the rest of us. In general, he celebrates hard work, humility, self-effacement, and devotion to a true vocation. Early in his text, he adapts the “Adam I and Adam II” construction from the work of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, Adam I being the more external, career-driven human, Adam II the one who “wants to have a serene inner character.” At times, this veers near the Devil Bugs Bunny and Angel Bugs that sit on the cartoon character’s shoulders at critical moments. Brooks liberally seasons the narrative with many allusions to history, philosophy, and literature. Viktor Frankl, Edgar Allan Poe, Paul Tillich, William and Henry James, Matthew Arnold, Virginia Woolf—these are but a few who pop up. Although Brooks goes after the selfie generation, he does so in a fairly nuanced way, noting that it was really the World War II Greatest Generation who started the ball rolling. He is careful to emphasize that no one—even those he profiles—is anywhere near flawless.
The author’s sincere sermon—at times analytical, at times hortatory—remains a hopeful one.Pub Date: April 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9325-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An informative, nostalgic evocation of a special urban dining experience.
An account of once-popular New York restaurants that had a rich social and cultural history.
“Since, by choice or historical necessity, exile and travel were defining aspects of Jewish life, somewhere a Jew was always eating out,” observes cartoonist and MacArthur fellow Katchor (Illustration/Parsons, the New School; Hand-Drying in America, 2013, etc.) in his exhaustively researched, entertaining, and profusely illustrated history of Jewish dining preferences and practices. The Garden of Eden, he notes wryly, was “the first private eating place open to the public,” serving as a model for all the restaurants that came after: cafes, cafeterias, buffets, milk halls, lunch counters, diners, delicatessens, and, especially, dairy restaurants, a favorite destination among New York Jews, which Katchor remembers from his wanderings around the city as a young adult. Dairy restaurants, because they served no meat, attracted diners who observed kosher laws; many boasted a long menu that included items such as mushroom cutlet, blintzes, broiled fish, vegetarian liver, and fried eggplant steak. Attracted by the homey appearance and “forlorn” atmosphere of these restaurants, Katchor set out to uncover their history, engaging in years of “aimless reading in the libraries of New York and on the pages of the internet,” where he found menus, memoirs, telephone directories, newspaper ads, fiction, and food histories that fill the pages of his book with colorful anecdotes, trivia, and food lore. Although dairy restaurants were popular with Jewish immigrants, their advent in the U.S. predated immigrants’ demand for Eastern European meatless dishes. The milk hall, often located in parks, resorts, or spas, gained popularity throughout 19th-century Europe. Franz Kafka, for example, treated himself to a glass of sour milk from a milk pavilion after a day in a Prague park. Jews were not alone in embracing vegetarianism. In Europe and America, shunning meat was inspired by several causes, including utopian socialism, which sought to distance itself from “the beef-eating aristocracy”; ethical preferences; and health concerns. A meatless diet relieved digestive problems, many sufferers found.
An informative, nostalgic evocation of a special urban dining experience.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8052-4219-5
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Schocken
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
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