Detailed but not dense: a sturdy addition to the literature of social justice and contemporary women’s issues.
A complex account of justice sought—and won—in a case that stretched out over a quarter-century.
Lois Jenson, the unlikely heroine of this tale by journalist Bingham (Women on the Hill, 1997) and attorney Gansler, had it tough back in 1974. A single mother of two children born out of wedlock, she lived on welfare, food stamps, and low-paying jobs, barely making ends meet in the far north of Minnesota. When the federal departments of justice and labor required nearby mills and mines to increase their numbers of female and minority employees, she found work, hard and dirty but well paid, at a taconite plant. She was one of the few women outside the front office, and when some of her fellow male coworkers greeted her with lewd remarks and suggestions, it was no surprise; the Mesabi Range’s rough, male-dominated society was still “at its core a frontier culture.” As another female employee said, local women “didn’t know enough to know the men’s behavior was offensive or to know it was belittling.” Outsider Jenson did, and she complained. She was ignored by management, harassed even further by some of the men, ostracized by some of the women. A union grievance evolved into a seemingly endless class-action lawsuit. Reconstructing courtroom back-and-forth (a snippet of examination: “When you used the word fuck in the workplace, you didn’t determine in advance whether or not someone’s sensitivities are more acute than yours, did you?”), Bingham and Gansler track the changing fortunes of the suit as it met at first with hostile judges, was heard by a more sympathetic appellate court, and eventually provided a precedent by which subsequent harassment cases would be measured.
Detailed but not dense: a sturdy addition to the literature of social justice and contemporary women’s issues.Pub Date: June 18, 2002
ISBN: 0-385-49612-5
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2002
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
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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