Punctuated by people-on-the-street interviews that reveal a breadth of popular opinion in Iran, Hiro’s portrait makes for...
Does Iran truly belong to an axis of evil? By this account, it’s not very rogue-statish, though perhaps not a lot of fun if you enjoy your Western-style vices.
In fact, journalist Hiro (Iraq: In the Eye of the Storm, 2003, etc.) suggests, it’s not so hard to find a drink in Tehran, surf the Net or catch a video, provided you know where to go—and this points to a division in Iranian society that the West seems only dimly aware of. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 was guided by two very different forces: a pro-democracy, anti-Shah, leftist movement of the middle class, and an anti-Western, anti-Shah, rightist movement that appealed to workers and country people. They collided more than colluded, and for years it appeared that all hope of democratic reform had been quashed by the mullahs. Still, in the 1990s reformist movements began to press for political freedoms that would be decided by the parliament rather than by religious leaders or a religious court. They succeeded, to a degree, particularly in liberalizing the press and securing the rights of popular assembly. “On paper,” Hiro writes, “this was a vast improvement on what transpired during the Shah’s reign,” though self-censorship and periodic repression would remain problems. So it is a quarter-century after the revolution, after a ruinous war with Iraq in the 1980s and long treatment as a pariah state—all of which, Hiro argues, has helped the religious conservatives retain their hold. The Bush administration’s enrollment of Iran alongside Iraq and North Korea and subsequent sword-rattling—even in the face of Colin Powell’s reminder, while still serving as Bush’s secretary of state, “Remember that the President of Iran is freely elected”—have only strengthened the conservatives’ hand, though Hiro reckons that in future the theocratic right will loosen social and economic strictures so long as it does not have to give up political power.
Punctuated by people-on-the-street interviews that reveal a breadth of popular opinion in Iran, Hiro’s portrait makes for provocative reading.Pub Date: July 10, 2005
ISBN: 1-56025-716-4
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Nation Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
However charily one should apply the word, a beautiful book, an unconditionally involving memoir for our time or any time.
Maya Angelou is a natural writer with an inordinate sense of life and she has written an exceptional autobiographical narrative which retrieves her first sixteen years from "the general darkness just beyond the great blinkers of childhood."
Her story is told in scenes, ineluctably moving scenes, from the time when she and her brother were sent by her fancy living parents to Stamps, Arkansas, and a grandmother who had the local Store. Displaced they were and "If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat." But alternating with all the pain and terror (her rape at the age of eight when in St. Louis With her mother) and humiliation (a brief spell in the kitchen of a white woman who refused to remember her name) and fear (of a lynching—and the time they buried afflicted Uncle Willie under a blanket of vegetables) as well as all the unanswered and unanswerable questions, there are affirmative memories and moments: her charming brother Bailey; her own "unshakable God"; a revival meeting in a tent; her 8th grade graduation; and at the end, when she's sixteen, the birth of a baby. Times When as she says "It seemed that the peace of a day's ending was an assurance that the covenant God made with children, Negroes and the crippled was still in effect."
However charily one should apply the word, a beautiful book, an unconditionally involving memoir for our time or any time.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1969
ISBN: 0375507892
Page Count: 235
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1969
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
An intriguing approach to identifying and relating to one’s emotions.
An analysis of our emotions and the skills required to understand them.
We all have emotions, but how many of us have the vocabulary to accurately describe our experiences or to understand how our emotions affect the way we act? In this guide to help readers with their emotions, Brackett, the founding director of Yale University’s Center for Emotional Intelligence, presents a five-step method he calls R.U.L.E.R.: We need to recognize our emotions, understand what has caused them, be able to label them with precise terms and descriptions, know how to safely and effectively express them, and be able to regulate them in productive ways. The author walks readers through each step and provides an intriguing tool to use to help identify a specific emotion. Brackett introduces a four-square grid called a Mood Meter, which allows one to define where an emotion falls based on pleasantness and energy. He also uses four colors for each quadrant: yellow for high pleasantness and high energy, red for low pleasantness and high energy, green for high pleasantness and low energy, and blue for low pleasantness and low energy. The idea is to identify where an emotion lies in this grid in order to put the R.U.L.E.R. method to good use. The author’s research is wide-ranging, and his interweaving of his personal story with the data helps make the book less academic and more accessible to general readers. It’s particularly useful for parents and teachers who want to help children learn to handle difficult emotions so that they can thrive rather than be overwhelmed by them. The author’s system will also find use in the workplace. “Emotions are the most powerful force inside the workplace—as they are in every human endeavor,” writes Brackett. “They influence everything from leadership effectiveness to building and maintaining complex relationships, from innovation to customer relations.”
An intriguing approach to identifying and relating to one’s emotions.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-21284-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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