In clear, patient prose, the author encourages us to stop and think about what has been in front of us our entire lives.
A noted novelist (Truth and Consequences, 2006, etc.) returns with a generally genial but sometimes-slicing analysis of our buildings and their interior spaces.
In the tradition of her earlier work (The Language of Clothes, 1981), Lurie’s new volume proceeds both thematically and chronologically (within chapters). She devotes sections to such types of buildings as private homes, religious structures, museums, schools, “houses of confinement” (prisons, hospitals, asylums, nursing homes), hotels and restaurants, stores and offices. She asks us to consider exteriors: What do they tell us about the building and its intents? What do they tell us about what we’ll experience inside? (Consider: a school that looks like a factory, a museum that resembles a palace, a retirement community that looks like a resort.) Lurie also takes us inside to help us see more clearly what’s before us: an office with cubicles, an elementary schoolroom with rows of desks bolted to the floor, a church that looks like a Gothic cathedral or like a theater complex. The author occasionally inserts a few personal comments, mentioning, for instance, that in her home, a spare bedroom serves the function of the attic (now missing in many newer homes). She also shows flashes of attitude here and there. Having discussed the pervasiveness of electronic devices in students’ lives, she notes how “silence and solitude” have become “either irrelevant or frightening or both.” Although Lurie alludes to multiple nonspecialist sources (and periodically offers quotations), her interest is not so much academic as analytical; on every page, she has us consider something we might not have thought of—e.g., did you ever wonder why supermarkets place ordinary staples (milk, eggs, etc.) very far away from the entrance?
In clear, patient prose, the author encourages us to stop and think about what has been in front of us our entire lives.Pub Date: Aug. 19, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-88-328560-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Delphinium
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
As with nearly all of Lewis’ books, this one succeeds on so many levels, including as a well-written primer on how the...
Lewis (The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed Our Minds, 2016, etc.) turns timely political reporting he published in Vanity Fair into a book about federal government bureaucracies during the first year of the Donald Trump presidency.
At first, the author’s curiosity about the relationship between individual citizens and massive federal agencies supported by taxpayer dollars did not lead him to believe the book would become a searing indictment of Trump. However, Lewis wisely allowed the evidence to dictate the narrative, resulting in a book-length indictment of Trump’s disastrous administration. The leading charge of the indictment is what Lewis terms “willful ignorance.” Neither Trump nor his appointees to head government agencies have demonstrated even the slightest curiosity about how those agencies actually function. After Trump’s election in November 2016, nobody from his soon-to-be-inaugurated administration visited federal agencies despite thorough preparation within those agencies to assist in a traditionally nonpartisan transition. Lewis primarily focuses on the Energy Department, the Agriculture Department, and the Commerce Department. To provide context, he contrasts the competent transition teams assembled after the previous elections of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Displaying his usual meticulous research and fluid prose, the author makes the federal bureaucracy come alive by focusing on a few individuals within each agency with fascinating—and sometimes heartwarming—backstories. In addition, Lewis explains why each of those individuals is important to the citizenry due to their sometimes-arcane but always crucial roles within the government. Throughout the book, unforgettable tidbits emerge, such as the disclosure by a Forbes magazine compiler of the world’s wealthiest individuals list that only three tycoons have intentionally misled the list’s compilers—one of the three is Trump, and another is Wilbur Ross, appointed by Trump as Commerce Secretary.
As with nearly all of Lewis’ books, this one succeeds on so many levels, including as a well-written primer on how the government serves citizens in underappreciated ways.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-324-00264-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
A clear and candid contribution to an essential conversation.
Straight talk to blacks and whites about the realities of racism.
In her feisty debut book, Oluo, essayist, blogger, and editor at large at the Establishment magazine, writes from the perspective of a black, queer, middle-class, college-educated woman living in a “white supremacist country.” The daughter of a white single mother, brought up in largely white Seattle, she sees race as “one of the most defining forces” in her life. Throughout the book, Oluo responds to questions that she has often been asked, and others that she wishes were asked, about racism “in our workplace, our government, our homes, and ourselves.” “Is it really about race?” she is asked by whites who insist that class is a greater source of oppression. “Is police brutality really about race?” “What is cultural appropriation?” and “What is the model minority myth?” Her sharp, no-nonsense answers include talking points for both blacks and whites. She explains, for example, “when somebody asks you to ‘check your privilege’ they are asking you to pause and consider how the advantages you’ve had in life are contributing to your opinions and actions, and how the lack of disadvantages in certain areas is keeping you from fully understanding the struggles others are facing.” She unpacks the complicated term “intersectionality”: the idea that social justice must consider “a myriad of identities—our gender, class, race, sexuality, and so much more—that inform our experiences in life.” She asks whites to realize that when people of color talk about systemic racism, “they are opening up all of that pain and fear and anger to you” and are asking that they be heard. After devoting most of the book to talking, Oluo finishes with a chapter on action and its urgency. Action includes pressing for reform in schools, unions, and local governments; boycotting businesses that exploit people of color; contributing money to social justice organizations; and, most of all, voting for candidates who make “diversity, inclusion and racial justice a priority.”
A clear and candid contribution to an essential conversation.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-58005-677-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Seal Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
