A sharp study of grief in both individuals and the community. (8-page photo insert, not seen)
The post-attack life of a New Jersey community that lost a disproportionate number of its members on 9/11.
Middletown: “Nearly fifty people were robbed from this middle-class commuter suburb,” giving it “the largest concentrated death toll.” Sheehy (Understanding Men’s Passages, 1998, etc.) followed a selection of families for the first 18 months after the attacks, through the disbelief and insulating numbness of the first days, through anger and tests of faith, through the discovery of resilience and independence, through relapses, and—for some—new lives and loves. Cantor Fitzgerald was widely represented in the community, and that brokerage firm’s post-disaster imbroglio is seen from the perspective of the victims’ families rather than of the ubiquitous Howard Lutnick. But working-class families are here, too. Although at times it feels as though Sheehy is using the victims to buttress her notion of life’s passages or is explaining away their grief as textbook examples of bereavement stages (“Planer was using avoidance—a typical trauma response,” or “Lisa was completely unaware of the disconnect between the verbal and emotional territories of her mind”), she does manage to portray each family and family member with a distinct personality. Most startling is the capacity of trauma’s net, which takes in not just the immediate families, but everyone from rescue workers to clergy and on to grief counselors themselves. Sheehy is particularly good with the layers and details of trauma: recognition of all the things the lost person did for their family, the paperwork and financial worries, the flashbacks, the crises in the survivor’s identity, getting the remains home piece by piece, the gremlins of guilt. Healing is a process, but a relentless one: “grieving is a spiral,” say Sheehy, and much of it is downward and ever-widening.
A sharp study of grief in both individuals and the community. (8-page photo insert, not seen)Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2003
ISBN: 0-375-50862-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2003
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
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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