A bit of a potpourri but a witty book full of insights, opinions, and good advice.
From the London-based Australian co-creator and host of The Guilty Feminist podcast comes a book-length version of that program.
A stand-up comedian who also hosts the award-winning BBC Radio 4 series Deborah Frances-White Rolls the Dice, the author opens her chapters with the phrase “I’m a feminist but” and proceeds with an example of a cause of remorse, such as lying about one’s weight by 20 pounds or mistaking Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique for the name of a classic perfume. Throughout the narrative, there are abundant examples of Frances-White’s weaknesses and the rifts between good intentions and human behavior, and she encourages feminists to shed their guilt and take up their “most unapologetic and persuasive voice.” In Part 1, the author provides a capsule history of the feminist movements and her opinions on their significance. In parts 2 and 3, Frances-White broadens her reach, taking on the air of the podcast, which she describes as a microclimate where women are given power, space, and the assumption of brilliance. The text features a mix of various pieces from the podcast. She includes her own angry speech about Brexit, her stand-up comedy bit satirizing how women undermine themselves, an irony-filled piece on Harvey Weinstein, and her feminist rewrite of the famous speech in Henry V, which ends with the rousing cry, “God for Women, Feminism, and Saint Angelou!” Frances-White also muses on the diet industry, the fun of makeup, being open to other people’s struggles, toxic masculinity, Donald Trump, female fertility, sexism in religion (now an atheist, she was raised as a member of Jehovah’s Witnesses), and women’s own sexual submission fantasies. Confidently opinionated, the author gives other feminist writers a voice, introducing them proudly and interviewing them intelligently. Fans of the TV series Fleabag will relish her lengthy interview with Phoebe Waller-Bridge, its creator and star.
A bit of a potpourri but a witty book full of insights, opinions, and good advice.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-58005-954-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Seal Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
A measured account of the development of the Soviet bomb program by Holloway (Political Science/Stanford, The Soviet Union and the Arms Race, 1983) that contrives to be both technically comprehensive and gripping. Using interviews with some of the main protagonists, such as Kapitsa and Sakharov (though before they were able to talk fully), and access to those archives that have become available in Russia, Holloway clarifies a number of issues. He confirms that the Soviets were heavily dependent on espionage to provide both a sense of the seriousness with which the British (and later the Americans) were pursuing nuclear weapons, and guidelines to their methods. Still, the success of the Soviet Union in constructing such a weapon, in almost the same amount of time as the US, was a ``remarkable feat,'' given the devastation of the Soviet economy after the war. The Communist command-administrative system, Holloway notes, ``showed itself able to mobilize resources on a massive scale, and to channel them into a top priority project.'' It was, however, at immense cost both in terms of the hundreds of thousands of prisoners toiling in the uranium mines and elsewhere, the appalling health and safety record, and the damage to the environment. The building of the hydrogen bomb, by contrast, was largely and no less remarkably an indigenous Soviet achievement. Little credit seems due to Stalin, who was responsible for shooting many of the top physicists during the purges and who understood the significance of nuclear weapons only after the explosion at Alamogordo. Nor does Holloway think much of Stalin's postwar policies, which succeeded in unifying the West and causing it to rearm, though he concludes that Stalin's refusal to be browbeaten made the US more cautious about asserting its nuclear monopoly. What could have been a dry technical and analytical study is enlivened by the immensity of the issues at stake and the extraordinary characters populating the story.
Pub Date: Sept. 21, 1994
ISBN: 0-300-06056-4
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
A poignant, heartfelt account of caring for children dying of AIDS. McCarroll, known as Brother Toby, initially retraces some of what he covered in Morning-Glory Babies (1988) about the formation of the Starcross Community, a lay Benedictine monastery in Sonoma, Calif. The community has been alternately tolerated and rejected by the Catholic hierarchy, which is apparently leery of its New Age influences. The celibates, both male and female, found their calling in adopting unwanted children, most of whom are HIV- positive. They soon attracted national attention for their efforts. Most of this slim volume is devoted to relating the stories of two particular children who challenged and changed Brother Toby's life in special ways. Tina, whom the author calls his ``daughter,'' was born and brought to the monastery when the monk was 57, having already raised and lost children of his own. Continually weakened by the virus and hospitalized with AIDS-related infections, Tina died three years later. Before she did, however, she grew into a willful, loving toddler who had her adopted father wrapped around her little finger. The other story is that of Brother Toby's goddaughter, Dana Rica. She was Romanian, and much of the book recounts the community's struggles with that country's bureaucracy on behalf of Dana Rica and other afflicted children. The girl's visit to Starcross was a high point for Brother Toby. His life, like the book, is filled with little miracles—a father singing to his daughter; watching a child play, dance, or laugh—and a quiet faith that death does not have the last word. Even with the grim subject matter and all the pain, this is a triumphant story that never degenerates into banality. It is the account of a group of people determined to make a difference—and of those who made a difference to them.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-11253-X
Page Count: 112
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
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