Despite its flaws, this book should help readers understand how organizations work, from the smallest nonprofit group to the...
A social psychologist explains how human groups or memes organize and operate, to the detriment and sometimes the benefit of civilization.
Minshall (The Jesus Book, 2012, etc.) describes memes as a “post personal force” that can aid society, but are often “the force behind all human tragedy.” The reason: once people join a meme, they yield their sense of morality to its amorality. Simply “Human Social Constructs,” memes form around a unifying idea or cause but then take on lives of their own. As with all living things, survival becomes paramount. More often destroyed from within rather than by external forces, memes may manufacture enemies to cement loyalty among followers. Minshall describes and dissects different types of memes, including nonprofit groups, government agencies, and corporations. The apparent leaders of memes, such as popes, presidents, and CEOs, seldom hold the real power. Bureaucrats, major stockholders, unions, or wealthy family dynasties typically call the shots. “The Cadre” or “enablers,” such as police and soldiers, enforce the social order, while “The Workers and Doers,” or producers, form the majority of members and accomplish most of the tasks. The lowest rungs include “Marginals,” such as youths and legal aliens, and “Outsiders,” including intruders, migrants, and illegal aliens, who are exploited as they try to gain a foothold. Although individuals may believe they can change the meme by rising to the top, it will either alter or expel them. Why not get rid of memes? Although they cause war and other havoc, memes also create the world’s positive things. Minshall has written a captivating book that can help anyone understand group behavior and why politicians promising change so seldom achieve it. His writing style is free-form and fluid, with touches of humor that sometimes fall flat with weak puns. The volume, littered with weird capitalization, superfluous exclamation points, and spelling mistakes of common as well as proper nouns, such as “Mark Zukerberg,” “Jack Welsh,” and “Julius Cesar,” cries out for a skillful editor and proofreader. It would also bolster Minshall’s case if he backed up his arguments with more footnotes. Like most critiques, this book is long on criticism but short on solutions, which seem in this case to boil down to hoping the United Nations will somehow get memes under control.
Despite its flaws, this book should help readers understand how organizations work, from the smallest nonprofit group to the largest political entity.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9642773-7-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Renaissance Institute Press
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An eclectic assortment of women make for an entertaining read.
An exuberant celebration of more than 100 women who shaped the myths and realities of New York City.
In her debut book, journalist Scelfo, who has written for the New York Times and Newsweek, aims to counter histories of New York that focus only on “male political leaders and male activists and male cultural tastemakers.” As the author discovered and shows, the contributions of women have been deeply significant, and she has chosen a copious roster of personalities, gathered under three dozen rubrics, such as “The Caretakers” (pioneering physicians Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell and Dr. Sara Josephine Baker, who enacted revolutionary hygienic measures in early-20th-century tenements); “The Loudmouths” (Joan Rivers and Better Midler); and “Wall Street” (brokerage firm founder Victoria Woodhull and miserly investor Hetty Green). With a plethora of women to choose from, Scelfo aimed for representation from musical theater, law enforcement, education, social justice movements, and various professions and organizations. Some of the women are familiar (Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis for her preservation work; Brooke Astor for her philanthropy), some iconic (Emma Lazarus, in a category of her own as “The Beacon”), and some little-known (artist Hildreth Meière, whose art deco designs can be seen on the south facade of Radio City Music Hall). One odd category is “The Crooks,” which includes several forgettable women who contributed to the city’s “cons and crimes.” The author’s brief, breezy bios reveal quirky facts about each woman, a form better suited to “The In-Crowd” (restaurateur Elaine Kaufman, hardly a crowd), entertainers (Betty Comden, Ethel Waters), and “The Wisecrackers” (Nora Ephron, Tina Fey) than to Susan Sontag, Edith Wharton, and Joan Didion. Nevertheless, the book is lively and fun, with something, no doubt, to pique anyone’s interest. Heald’s blithe illustrations add to the lighthearted mood.
An eclectic assortment of women make for an entertaining read.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-58005-653-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Seal Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlanticsenior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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