Fans of Kuczynski’s style of personal journalism will be entertained.
Vanity knows no bounds in this breezy account of Americans’ love affair with physical enhancement.
New York Times Style reporter Kuczynski injects her experiences as both participant and observer into these revelations about the costly and painful business of fighting off age and battling imperfections through cosmetic surgery. She reveals who undergoes it and why, what they spend and what they endure in the pursuit of beauty. Some take a combination safari-and-surgery trip to South Africa; others make a monthly maintenance visit to a local skin-care salon. Kuczynski interviews women and men who have undergone surgery and the doctors who work on them, focusing particularly on New York and Los Angeles. She attends conventions where the tools of the trade are marketed and the providers of cosmetic enhancement learn how to promote their services, revealing how this lucrative, heavily advertised business is being conducted by people with various levels of training. On a more sober note, she recounts stories of deaths that have occurred during cosmetic surgery, specifically those of Olivia Goldsmith and Susan Malitz, both at Manhattan Eye, Ear, and Throat Hospital in 2004. Describing herself as only “relatively obsessed” with her appearance (a description the reader may find questionable), the author relates her own unpleasant experience with liposuction and the comic near-disaster of her venture into lip enhancement by Restylene injection. Kuczynski also includes a capsule history of cosmetic surgery from reconstructive efforts during World War I to the current Botox craze. The various components combine to provide a solid summary of the downside of cosmetic surgery, though the author’s self-regard is a tad annoying.
Fans of Kuczynski’s style of personal journalism will be entertained.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2006
ISBN: 0-385-50853-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2006
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
A heartfelt if somewhat unsurprising view of old age by the former president. Carter (Living Faith, 1996, etc.) succinctly evaluates the evolution and current status of federal policies concerning the elderly (including a balanced appraisal of the difficulties facing the Social Security system). He also meditates, while drawing heavily on autobiographical anecdotes, on the possibilities for exploration and intellectual and spiritual growth in old age. There are few lightning bolts to dazzle in his prescriptions (cultivate family ties; pursue the restorative pleasures of hobbies and socially minded activities). Yet the warmth and frankness of Carter’s remarks prove disarming. Given its brevity, the work is more of a call to senior citizens to reconsider how best to live life than it is a guide to any of the details involved.
Pub Date: Oct. 26, 1998
ISBN: 0-345-42592-8
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1998
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