With psychologist Medved (The Case Against Divorce, not reviewed, etc.), Quayle reboots the controversy stirred by his 1992 speech that included criticism of the television character Murphy Brown. The vice president faulted Brown for ``mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it just another `lifestyle choice.' '' Quayle continues the argument here, defending family values via five affirmative profiles of families. Quayle writes in support of strong, ``intact'' families, meaning families with a father present. Nevertheless, the families interviewed for this book include one headed by a divorced mother of five children who illustrates the important role community and support networks can play. The other families are ethnically and economically diverse, ranging from Caucasian farm owners in rural Virginia to a Hispanic family in East Los Angeles, African-Americans in Chicago, and an entrepreneurial clan in Hawaii. The authors say they looked for ``healthy'' families, with children who were going to make it, sans drugs, alcohol abuse, and violence, in an attempt to identify the qualities that made families succeed. Parents, children, and extended family members were interviewed by both Quayle and Medved, who have recorded some moving stories. Among the values these families share that the authors believe to be essential are: A belief in giving priority to the children (without indulging them); practicing mutual respect; the presence of religious beliefs; and the cultivation of extended family and community support. The families also place a major emphasis on securing a good education (and on strictly limiting the time their children watch TV). Recommended reinforcement for families already on the road to success, but unlikely to break through to those struggling with the moral, economic, social, and philosophical confusions of the new millennium. (24 b&w photos, not seen) ($200,000 ad/promo; author tour; TV & radio satellite tour)
Pub Date: May 8, 1996
ISBN: 0-06-017378-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Zondervan
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1996
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
Bernstein and Woodward, the two Washington Post journalists who broke the Big Story, tell how they did it by old fashioned seat-of-the-pants reporting — in other words, lots of intuition and a thick stack of phone numbers. They've saved a few scoops for the occasion, the biggest being the name of their early inside source, the "sacrificial lamb" H**h Sl**n. But Washingtonians who talked will be most surprised by the admission that their rumored contacts in the FBI and elsewhere never existed; many who were telephoned for "confirmation" were revealing more than they realized. The real drama, and there's plenty of it, lies in the private-eye tactics employed by Bernstein and Woodward (they refer to themselves in the third person, strictly on a last name basis). The centerpiece of their own covert operation was an unnamed high government source they call Deep Throat, with whom Woodward arranged secret meetings by positioning the potted palm on his balcony and through codes scribbled in his morning newspaper. Woodward's wee hours meetings with Deep Throat in an underground parking garage are sheer cinema: we can just see Robert Redford (it has to be Robert Redford) watching warily for muggers and stubbing out endless cigarettes while Deep Throat spills the inside dope about the plumbers. Then too, they amass enough seamy detail to fascinate even the most avid Watergate wallower — what a drunken and abusive Mitchell threatened to do to Post publisher Katherine Graham's tit, and more on the Segretti connection — including the activities of a USC campus political group known as the Ratfuckers whose former members served as a recruiting pool for the Nixon White House. As the scandal goes public and out of their hands Bernstein and Woodward seem as stunned as the rest of us at where their search for the "head ratfucker" has led. You have to agree with what their City Editor Barry Sussman realized way back in the beginning — "We've never had a story like this. Just never."
Pub Date: June 18, 1974
ISBN: 0671894412
Page Count: 372
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1974
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