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THREE IN LOVE

MÉNAGES À TROIS FROM ANCIENT TO MODERN TIMES

A hop, skip, and jump through the centuries, peering into crowded bedrooms and extolling the joys of sex in triplicate. Foster and Foster (Forbidden Journey: The Life of Alexandra David-Neel, not reviewed) and alternative health expert Hadady have themselves been a trio for more than a decade, but this is no how-to manual and doesn't answer the frequently asked question about who does what to whom. Instead, using a very loose definition of ``ménage'' that includes husbands or wives with long-term but secret lovers outside the home, the authors cheerfully reel off vignettes of historical ``ménagers,'' from the Bible's Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar to the Stones' Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Marianne Faithfull. Delicious, slightly titillating gossip abounds about such well-known threesomes as Henry and June and Anaïs Nin; Neal and Carolyn Cassady and Jack Kerouac, and, of course, almost any combination of male and female from the Bloomsbury group. Included also are, no surprise, rouÇs like Casanova, who participated in any number of long-term and short-term ménages, philosophers like Rousseau and Nietzsche, and royalty from Henry II of France (with Diane de Poitiers and Catherine de Medici) to Princess Di (``There were three of us in this marriage''). Psychoanalyst Lou Andreas-Salome, a student of Freud's, participated in ``metaphysical'' ménages (no body contact, but a meeting of minds), and Superman/Clark Kent, with Lois Lane, flies as a symbol of fantasy ménages. More than a few hoary old tales surface, including those of Eleanor Roosevelt and her bodyguard, Earl Miller, and Queen Victoria and her servant, John Brown (lovers, possibly, but ménages?). This book is a 400-page scandal sheet, full of exaggeration and innuendo, but also good-humored and slightly spicy—to be shared in small doses with other ménagers or even around the water cooler when office rumor ebbs. (15 b&w photos, not seen)

Pub Date: July 2, 1997

ISBN: 0-06-251295-1

Page Count: 400

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1997

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WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR

A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...

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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

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GOOD ECONOMICS FOR HARD TIMES

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

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