by Elisabeth Stevens illustrated by Elisabeth Stevens ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 24, 2016
These line drawings create a spirited monument to a rocky era in American history.
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A debut book offers a collection of drawings from the artist’s time working at various magazines.
This collection begins with a four-page interview between Stevens and her daughter, Laura Schleussner, which reveals the artist/writer’s motivations and insights. Stevens lived in New York City in the early 1960s, working toward a Ph.D. in literature at Columbia University. She drew primarily for the magazines Challenge, the New Leader, and the National Review. This volume includes images depicting turbulent moments in U.S. history, like President John F. Kennedy’s funeral (1963) and the riots following the enrollment of the University of Mississippi’s first black student, James Meredith (1962). Stevens moved to Washington, D.C., in 1965, where she began writing for the Washington Post, eventually transitioning from artist to full-time writer. Following the interview are over 70 black-and-white illustrations—including a removable poster—featuring New Orleans jazz musicians, rural Mississippi and West Texas, industrial America, and striking unions. After the illustrations comes an article called “Death in the Mines” that Stevens wrote about the 1963 Dola, West Virginia, mining disaster for the New Leader. The article shows her artwork as it appeared alongside her grim reportage on the methane gas explosion, which implicated the Clinchfield Coal Company in the deaths of 22 men. Stevens’ collection should be of great interest to those not only fascinated by the 1960s, but also by the story of a woman who “did not want to be a sheltered housewife, like most of my friends from my class at Wellesley.” In the clarity of her voice in the interview, she portrays the struggle of succeeding in an era when most women were expected to toil as secretaries. She learned: “It isn’t enough to be rich. It isn’t enough to be famous. You have to know. You have to understand...and that can be a very hard lesson.” Stevens’ pen line of choice is bold, outlining building facades and strikers’ portraits alike. Most effective are the pieces textured by thinner lines, which lend them an iconic, stamplike quality.
These line drawings create a spirited monument to a rocky era in American history.Pub Date: May 24, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 15
Publisher: Goss Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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by Daniel Kahneman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2011
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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