Successfully illustrates that breaking things down into manageable pieces and making even the smallest effort can have a...
An examination of the widely accepted belief that everyday citizens are powerless to effect positive change over the world’s issues.
With so many global crises, it can seem dishearteningly unlikely that anyone of modest means can effect meaningful change. LaMotte, author and musician, who has a master’s degree in International Studies Peace and Conflict Resolution, notes that as a culture, “we have come to a place where we equate cynicism with realism, and hope with naiveté.” While he does allow there is the alternative—naïve optimism—he asserts that living in hope isn’t naïve; he recommends “changing” not “fixing.” Additionally, while LaMotte doesn’t deny that there are times when larger efforts and sacrifices are necessary, he shows that, often, it’s the little things that count. Among other references, LaMotte compares the “Hero Narrative vs Movement Narrative” to illustrate how the Hero Narrative (“an extraordinary individual takes dramatic action in a moment of crisis”) doesn’t implement large-scale change nearly as effectively as the Movement Narrative (“many people taking small actions that contribute to a large shift”). Similar to the way a musician seems to suddenly appear with a hit record, few people realize that famous icons—Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.—had actually been working toward their goals for many years. For example, Rosa Parks’ bus incident wasn’t her first act of civil disobedience. While there are high-profile, outspoken people featured in the book, LaMotte makes a solid point that one doesn’t have to be a “radical activist” to make an impact. It’s not always the loudest voice doing all the work or making headway; rather, it’s also possible to support a cause and help effect change from behind the scenes. After many thoughtful, thought-provoking observations, as well as personal stories and relevant examples, LaMotte includes a section called “Pick One” that helps readers choose a cause and take the first steps in implementing a change.
Successfully illustrates that breaking things down into manageable pieces and making even the smallest effort can have a collective positive impact.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2014
ISBN: 978-0990650003
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Dryad Press
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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