A persuasive argument for nurturing “childhood normalcy” even for the stunningly gifted and talented.
A journalist vividly portrays the positive and negative impacts of being a child prodigy.
Literary editor of the Atlantic, Hulbert (Raising America: Experts, Parents, and a Century of Advice About Children, 2003, etc.) follows her previous examination of the challenges of child-rearing by homing in on a special population of children: prodigies. She begins her sympathetic, sharply drawn profiles early in the 20th century with William James Sidis (his godfather was philosopher William James), a mathematics genius who entered Harvard at the age of 11, and his contemporary Norbert Wiener, the founder of cybernetics, who at the age of 15 arrived at Harvard as a graduate student in zoology. Other prodigies include the talented and adorable child star Shirley Temple; African-American pianist Philippa Schuyler; irascible chess champion Bobby Fischer; eccentric computer whizzes such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Jonathan Edwards; and several astonishing pianists: Jay Greenberg, who produced a staggering number of compositions by the time he was 8; Matt Savage, who transferred his love of numbers to the piano keyboard; and Marc Yu, who performed with Lang Lang at Carnegie Hall when he was 10. Investigating the correlation between genius and autism, Hulbert cites the observation of one Juilliard teacher: “Genius is an abnormality, and can signal other abnormalities,” such as “A.D.D. or O.C.D. or Asperger’s." Yet parents are apt to focus on the outsized talent, while often failing to help the child deal with social and emotional problems. Growing into adulthood, many prodigies experience depression and lash out in rebellion; early mastery “may become shadowed by anxiety, blocking the engagement with a wider world that helps gifts and creativity flourish.” Hulbert intends these portraits to serve as cautionary tales in “an overachiever culture of hovering adults and social media-saturated youths,” and she counsels parents against “the impulse to herald children’s talents” at the risk of “inspiring swelled heads and raising sky-high hopes that are likely to be disappointed.”
A persuasive argument for nurturing “childhood normalcy” even for the stunningly gifted and talented.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-101-94729-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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
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