A welcome—though by no means essential—sociocultural study for the Beatlemaniac bookworm.
Sociological study of first-generation Beatles fans and how the Fab Four shaped ordinary Americans’ lives over a six-year period.
Sociologist and baby boomer Leonard manages to find a new angle of approach to the study of the Beatles. Her book is the latest testament to the seemingly infinite possibilities for commercial exploitation of the lads from Liverpool in the literary marketplace. However, instead of an opportunistic music critic spouting off on the Beatles’ multiform wonderfulness, here we get a cross section of the first generation of Beatles fans adding their own long-overdue opinions to this seemingly endless pop-cultural conversation. Although the book does have some of the unfortunate trappings of an average academic research project, Leonard mostly steers clear of convoluted classroom language and deluges of distracting footnotes to fashion an intermittently enlightening historical-cultural narrative of how the Beatles helped change America’s youth culture forever. The book is divided into chapters that cover a number of different important eras in Beatles history, beginning with the author’s pre-Beatlemania historical perspective on how “the events of the Kennedy sixties gave birth to a new sensibility, a new consciousness, at odds with the conformity and stifling constraint of the era.” The most engaging aspects of the book are not so much about the Beatles’ music widening an already expanding generation gap with their attitudes, hairstyles, clothes and sophisticated pop tunes; the value of the book hinges more on intergenerational comparisons and contrasts of how “Beatleness” affected members of the youth demographic, especially when it comes to differing gender perspectives on the Beatles’ music. Leonard also provides a helpful overall sense of how the average American Beatles fan not only accommodated the lightning-speed stylistic shifts in the band’s music from 1964 to 1970, but how these changes affected the decisions they made in their own personal lives.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62872-417-2
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
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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