Spirited, witty, and ferociously incisive.
Bitch Media co-founder and creative director Zeisler (Feminism and Pop Culture, 2008) ruminates about how the current wave of feminism does not “challenge beliefs…so much as it offers nips and tucks.”
Fifteen years into the new century, feminism has come to occupy a complex, highly visible place in American popular culture. But according to the author, though the celebrity and consumer “embrace of feminism…positions it as a cool, fun, accessible…identity,” the inequities that gave rise to the movement are alive and well. Celebrities like Beyoncé and Katy Perry transform feminist sentiments about independence and self-respect into hit songs that make them millions while doing little to promote real change. And while women seem to be appearing more prominently in big-budget Hollywood films, in 2014, only 12 percent of all leading roles in the top 100 grossing movies were for females. Clothing brands like Spanx attempt to make a connection to female professional success with slogans like “Re-shape the way you get dressed so you can reshape the world!” Though apparently positive, advertisements such as these subtly play on women’s insecurities by suggesting that the only thing standing between them and success is a properly controlled physical appearance. As Zeisler astutely argues, choice is really for women with the socioeconomic status that can support it rather than "the vast majority" stuck outside the halls of privilege. The author makes clear that no great strides have been made in changing the prevailing capitalist structures that suggest women’s liberation—for those who can afford it—can come through consumerism. Despite her critiques, however, Zeisler makes it clear that however much it has been co-opted by capitalism, popular culture can still be a tool to promote feminist ideas to a mass audience. But until marketplace feminism can disentangle itself from surface marketplace glamour, it is still a work in process.
Spirited, witty, and ferociously incisive.Pub Date: May 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-61039-589-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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