Entertaining and enlightening.
A collection of elegant and engrossing essays on the theme of birth.
González-Crussi (Emeritus, Pathology/Northwestern Univ. Medical School; Suspended Animation, 1995, etc.) blends literature and science, philosophy and religion, history and myth into his own unique meditations. Beginning at the beginning, he opens with reflections on the origins of life and the invention of sexual reproduction, and as is his wont, moves seamlessly from laboratory to library, drawing on 20th-century physiologists, Renaissance artists, and Greek philosophers. When next he considers the male obsession with female purity, he takes the reader to Egypt, said to be the Arab world’s hymen-repair center, a growing business in a culture where loss of virginity has led to the murder of women by their male relatives. Following essays take up the uterus, offering both solid facts and preposterous myths about the womb; fanciful notions about procreation; and erroneous beliefs about the transmission of maternal impressions to the developing fetus. González-Crussi draws on his own delivery-room experiences in his discussion of placental membranes, or cauls, and their purported miraculous powers. One of the delights of reading González-Crussi is his astonishing erudition: His essay on the age-old role of midwives and their displacement by male doctors with the resultant transfer of deliveries from traditional home care to high-tech hospitals contains a startling story about the treachery of midwives taken from Diderot’s Grande Encyclopedie. He ends on a somber note, expressing misgivings about the uses of reproductive technology and warning that “we know not where we are going or even where we should go.”
Entertaining and enlightening.Pub Date: June 10, 2004
ISBN: 1-58567-449-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2004
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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