A smart, witty account of America’s failure to communicate.
A veteran writer delivers a plea for renewed communication in American public and private life in this collection of essays.
As the son of parents who were both “writers by trade” in the advertising industry, Murray was raised with a deep appreciation for the power of words. Today, he heads the Professional Speechwriters Association and serves as editor and publisher of the venerable monthly magazine Vital Speeches of the Day. In this book, he offers readers over 50 essays loosely centered on the thesis that America lacks meaningful avenues of authentic communication. Indeed, despite the nation’s ideological and cultural divides, the author maintains that most Americans actually “share vastly more common experiences and values than we know.” The work’s title comes from the famous remarks delivered by Robert F. Kennedy shortly after news broke of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, as the United States presidential candidate urged Americans to follow the slain leader’s example of making “an effort to understand” one another across racial and political divides. Though Murray, with a trademark candor, notes that in retrospect the speech “sounds so bland….So preachy. So white,” its message is “just as urgent” today. With a firm command of U.S. politics and history and a matching wit, the author’s short essays present keen insights on figures ranging from President Donald Trump to former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Despite his call to “understanding,” Murray is equally emphatic in rejecting a feigned civility that glosses over real differences, noting that some of the nation’s most acclaimed communicators, from H.L. Mencken to Hunter S. Thompson, were renowned for their acerbic critiques of fellow Americans. Though politics is Murray’s bailiwick, it is his later reflections on the importance of communication in one’s personal life that stand out. Essays on the value and intersection of effective communication with marriage, grief, and technology provide a poignancy that transcends politics, though they sometimes make for a thematically disjointed read. Some readers may also balk at the book’s suggestion that the term privileged is a counterproductive “fighting word” that fails to win converts while the essay itself neglects to supply a meaningful alternative.
A smart, witty account of America’s failure to communicate.Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63331-048-3
Page Count: 225
Publisher: Disruption Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A master class in how gender has been weaponized in support of conservative values and authoritarian regimes.
A deeply informed critique of the malicious initiatives currently using gender as a political tool to arouse fear and strengthen political and religious institutions.
In their latest book, following The Force of Nonviolence, Butler, the noted philosopher and gender studies scholar, documents and debunks the anti-gender ideology of the right, the core principle of which is that male and female are natural categories whose recognition is essential for the survival of the family, nations, and patriarchal order. Its proponents reject “sex” as a malleable category infused with prior political and cultural understandings. By turning gender into a “phantasmatic scene,” they enable those in positions of authority to deflect attention from such world-destroying forces as war, predatory capitalism, and climate change. Butler explores the ideology’s presence in the U.S., the U.K., Uganda, and Hungary, countries where legislation has limited the rights of trans and homosexual people and denied them their sexual identity. The author also delves into the ideology’s roots among Evangelicals and the Catholic Church and such political leaders as Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán. Butler is particularly bothered by trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs), who treat trans women as “male predators in disguise.” For the author, “the gap between the perceived or lived body and prevailing social norms can never be fully closed.” They imagine “a world where the many relations to being socially embodied that exist become more livable” and calls for alliances across differences and “a radical democracy informed by socialist values.” Butler compensates for the thinness of some of their recommendations with an astute dissection of the ideology’s core ideas and impressive grasp of its intellectual pretensions. This is a wonderfully thoughtful and impassioned book on a critically important centerpiece of contemporary authoritarianism and patriarchy.
A master class in how gender has been weaponized in support of conservative values and authoritarian regimes.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780374608224
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
The choir is sure to enjoy this impassioned preaching on familiar progressive themes.
Essays on current political topics by a high-profile actor and activist.
Milano explains in an introduction that she began writing this uneven collection while dealing with a severe case of Covid-19 and suffering from "persistent brain fog.” In the first essay, "On Being Unapologetically Fucked Up,” the author begins by fuming over a February 2019 incident in which she compared MAGA caps worn by high school kids to KKK hoods. She then runs through a grab bag of flash-point news items (police shootings, border crimes, sexual predators in government), deploying the F-bomb with abandon and concluding, "What I know is that fucked up is as fundamental a state of the world as night and day. But I know there is better. I know that ‘less fucked up’ is a state we can live in.” The second essay, "Believe Women," discusses Milano’s seminal role in the MeToo movement; unfortunately, it is similarly conversational in tone and predictable in content. One of the few truly personal essays, "David," about the author's marriage, refutes the old saw about love meaning never having to say you're sorry, replacing it with "Love means you can suggest a national sex strike and your husband doesn't run away screaming." Milano assumes, perhaps rightly, that her audience is composed of followers and fans; perhaps these readers will know what she is talking about in the seemingly allegorical "By Any Other Name," about her bad experience with a certain rosebush. "Holy shit, giving birth sucked," begins one essay. "Words are weird, right?" begins the next. "Welp, this is going to piss some of you off. Hang in there," opens a screed about cancel culture—though she’s entirely correct that “it’s childish, divisive, conceited, and Trumpian to its core.” By the end, however, Milano's intelligence, compassion, integrity, and endurance somewhat compensate for her lack of literary polish.
The choir is sure to enjoy this impassioned preaching on familiar progressive themes.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-18329-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
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