Required reading for activists and for those wondering where things went wrong for America’s working people.
Affecting portrait of a decaying loop on the Rust Belt.
Science journalist Rudacille (The Riddle of Gender: Science, Activism, and Transgender Rights, 2005, etc.) is a native of Dundalk, Md., a town near Baltimore and, like that larger city, a place of mixed ethnicities and decidedly mixed fortunes. It is now ground zero for what President Obama noted in his campaign about the bitterness felt by blue-collar, and especially white blue-collar, America of late, a remark for which Obama was much criticized. “But he was only saying what anyone who comes from a place like Dundalk knows full well is true,” writes the author. “Over the past thirty years, its residents have watched a hard-won prosperity and security slip away.” Rudacille provides close descriptions of that hard winning, an effort born of union organizing and endless negotiation against improbable odds. Some of the champions of that effort were unabashed socialists and communists. Recalls one worker, “When I was a kid, I overheard a lot of conversations about workers’ rights…A lot of it was in Italian.” Italians and Eastern Europeans bonded with longtime Marylanders to work against the color line—not necessarily out of any strong affection for African-American workers in those days, Rudacille notes, but rather because of the difficulty of trying to organize parallel segregated unions. Some workers prospered; others became ill from lungs full of asbestos and veins full of industrial toxins; but all made a community that thrived until corporate executives, seeking a way to reduce costs while innovating, took the jobs overseas, often to plants built in the aftermath of war against our former enemies. In the end, Rudacille has delivered a book that would do Studs Terkel proud, partaking of his oral-historical approach to the past at turns, imbued with his pro-labor spirit throughout.
Required reading for activists and for those wondering where things went wrong for America’s working people.Pub Date: March 23, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-375-42368-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
Career and business advice for the hashtag generation. For all its self-absorption, this book doesn’t offer much reflection...
A Dumpster diver–turned-CEO details her rise to success and her business philosophy.
In this memoir/business book, Amoruso, CEO of the Internet clothing store Nasty Gal, offers advice to young women entrepreneurs who seek an alternative path to fame and fortune. Beginning with a lengthy discussion of her suburban childhood and rebellious teen years, the author describes her experiences living hand to mouth, hitchhiking, shoplifting and dropping out of school. Her life turned around when, bored at work one night, she decided to sell a few pieces of vintage clothing on eBay. Fast-forward seven years, and Amoruso was running a $100 million company with 350 employees. While her success is admirable, most of her advice is based on her own limited experiences and includes such hackneyed lines as, “When you accept yourself, it’s surprising how much other people will accept you, too.” At more than 200 pages, the book is overlong, and much of what the author discusses could be summarized in a few tweets. In fact, much of it probably has been: One of the most interesting sections in the book is her description of how she uses social media. Amoruso has a spiritual side, as well, and she describes her belief in “chaos magic” and “sigils,” a kind of wishful-thinking exercise involving abstract words. The book also includes sidebars featuring guest “girlbosses” (bloggers, Internet entrepreneurs) who share equally clichéd suggestions for business success. Some of the guidance Amoruso offers for interviews (don’t dress like you’re going to a nightclub), getting fired (don’t call anyone names) and finding your fashion style (be careful which trends you follow) will be helpful to her readers, including the sage advice, “You’re not special.”
Career and business advice for the hashtag generation. For all its self-absorption, this book doesn’t offer much reflection or insight.Pub Date: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-399-16927-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Portfolio
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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