Like its subject: not for everyone, but a model of its kind.
Everything you always wanted to know about man’s closest friend.
Both scourge and blessing, conduit to excruciating torment and boundless bliss, the penis elicits the worst and the best in man, from rapist to lover. Journalist Friedman tracks this double path throughout the centuries, beginning with the devilish story of an accused witch’s execution for her dalliance with Satan’s icy protuberance. A constant stream of similarly anecdotal evidence illustrates the manifold reactions from horror to adoration the male member has provoked. Religious reflection on supernatural penises—from the demon rod of Satan to the divine member of Christ, with a special nod to Priapus, the minor Greek deity of the phallus—establishes the foundation for all the cultural crises the penis has created over the years. The major names in penile history (da Vinci, Freud, Mailer) all make their appearances in Friedman’s doughty history, but the true pleasure here lies in the moments of inspired lunacy provided by humanity’s tormented relationship with sexuality and the human body. How far have we come? Friedman notes two particularly telling moments at scholarly conferences 300 years apart. In order to share his 1677 discovery of spermatozoa with the scientific community, Anton van Leeuwenhoek first had to attest that he was not a chronic masturbator but had obtained his specimens during the established course of marital relations. By contrast, physician Giles Brindley suffered no such embarrassment when, in 1983, he trotted his own medically enhanced erection through a throng of urologists at a Las Vegas medical convention, leading the charge for medically sanctioned tumescence and corporate cash. In between the snickers, Friedman clear-headedly investigates the ways in which the penis has been deployed as an instrument of oppression, sexism, and racism.
Like its subject: not for everyone, but a model of its kind.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2001
ISBN: 0-684-85320-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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
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