A 16-step program for overcoming addiction and dependency that speaks to the special needs of women and minorities; by a self-described ``feminist, Quaker, psychologist, healer, peace and social justice activist and a woman on [her] own spiritual journey.'' While acknowledging that AA's 12-step recovery program works for some, Kasl (Women, Sex, and Addiction, 1989) found that its allegedly upper-middle-class, white, male, Christian value system did not meet her own needs. The reaction from hundreds of women to a revised 12-step program that she published in Ms. in 1990 has led to the present book. After analyzing AA, which she sees as too dogmatic and reflective of the patriarchal nature of our society, Kasl examines the approaches of other programs and methods, such as Women for Sobriety, Secular Organization for Sobriety/Save Our Selves, Rational Recovery, and aversion therapy. Taking a holistic approach and adopting a special vocabulary (to Kasl, ``faith'' is a verb, and since ``recovery'' implies ``covering over,'' she prefers ``dis-covery''), the author offers a program designed to build a sense of self and to empower one to take charge of one's life. Those disturbed by references to chakras, mandalas, the sacred spirit, and life- force energy, however, may be made uneasy. And the unity of the book is marred by a curious chapter on chronic yeast infections and diet that reveals Kasl's cynicism about mainstream institutions and her credulity about unscientific claims; in it, she faults the medical profession for failing to acknowledge the significance of Candida albicans and recommends Harvey and Marilyn Diamond's controversial Fit for Life (1985), a questionable source for nutrition advice. Likely to offend those committed to orthodoxy, but offering a strong case for flexibility and diversity in programs for recovery from substance abuse. (Illustrations—not seen.)
Pub Date: June 3, 1992
ISBN: 0-06-055263-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1992
An extraordinary true tale of torment, retribution, and loyalty that's irresistibly readable in spite of its intrusively melodramatic prose. Starting out with calculated, movie-ready anecdotes about his boyhood gang, Carcaterra's memoir takes a hairpin turn into horror and then changes tack once more to relate grippingly what must be one of the most outrageous confidence schemes ever perpetrated. Growing up in New York's Hell's Kitchen in the 1960s, former New York Daily News reporter Carcaterra (A Safe Place, 1993) had three close friends with whom he played stickball, bedeviled nuns, and ran errands for the neighborhood Mob boss. All this is recalled through a dripping mist of nostalgia; the streetcorner banter is as stilted and coy as a late Bowery Boys film. But a third of the way in, the story suddenly takes off: In 1967 the four friends seriously injured a man when they more or less unintentionally rolled a hot-dog cart down the steps of a subway entrance. The boys, aged 11 to 14, were packed off to an upstate New York reformatory so brutal it makes Sing Sing sound like Sunnybrook Farm. The guards continually raped and beat them, at one point tossing all of them into solitary confinement, where rats gnawed at their wounds and the menu consisted of oatmeal soaked in urine. Two of Carcaterra's friends were dehumanized by their year upstate, eventually becoming prominent gangsters. In 1980, they happened upon the former guard who had been their principal torturer and shot him dead. The book's stunning denouement concerns the successful plot devised by the author and his third friend, now a Manhattan assistant DA, to free the two killers and to exact revenge against the remaining ex-guards who had scarred their lives so irrevocably. Carcaterra has run a moral and emotional gauntlet, and the resulting book, despite its flaws, is disturbing and hard to forget. (Film rights to Propaganda; author tour)
Pub Date: July 10, 1995
ISBN: 0-345-39606-5
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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