A humorous and potent takedown of the criticism awaiting mothers at—and between—every extreme.
An investigation into the bad-mother/good-mother binary and the way it shapes a mother’s place in society today.
Having reported on both popular culture and deeper sociopolitical shifts for outlets such as New York and Rolling Stone, Dickson weaves together her observations to dive deep into a variety of “bad mother” tropes. From stage mothers and unapologetically sexual clichés to ambitious career women, the author’s subjects demonstrate how the “expansiveness” of the bad mom label, applied across political and cultural spectrums, renders every mother subject to judgment, thus reinforcing the broader disempowerment of all women. Dickson’s hope is to spur some measure of empathy, maybe even solidarity, in the reader to counter the systemic forces that erect these mothers as villains. To make her point, she turns to (sometimes mediocre) cult classics and revisits some of her own previous reporting, draping her research in a healthy dose of bewildered snark and a hint of amusement with herself. While frequently entertaining, these witty jabs and asides sometimes dilute the potency of her fury and distract from its gravitas. Dickson is (rightly) quick to acknowledge the privilege of her race and class, keenly noting how the obsession with and variability of the repercussions of being labeled as a “bad mom” differ across races and economic classes. The author flirts with—but dutifully avoids—offering a clear and authoritative definition of a good mom. Instead, she keeps her focus on the “insanely rigorous standards surrounding motherhood” that have persisted even as women have pursued and found a measure of freedom, success, and support in other domains. She thus suggests a new narrative of female empowerment in a world where social media and sensational media coverage further entrench expectations that mothers be relentlessly selfless, materially unrewarded, and eternally disconnected.
A humorous and potent takedown of the criticism awaiting mothers at—and between—every extreme.Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2026
ISBN: 9781668051115
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon Element
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
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
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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