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THE WHOLE WOMAN

Greer’s ba-a-a-ck in top effing form, as she might say. This book takes up where The Female Eunuch left off, trashing the optimists who believe feminism has moved women along and the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately generation who believe there are no battles left to fight. Greer (Daddy, We Hardly Knew You, 1990, etc.) said that she would never write a sequel to The Female Eunuch (1971), but the “fire flared up in [her] belly” when she saw feminism stalled and some feminists asserting that women now had it all. Wrong, asserts Greer: “On every side, we see women troubled, exhausted, mutiliated, lonely, guilty, mocked by the headlined success of the few.” Greer proceeds to outline, issue by issue, where women are stuck in the mire of an unliberated society. Beginning with a section on “Body,” she tackles the Barbie school of beauty, cosmetic surgery, transsexuals, abortion, and mutilation (including episiotomies, cesarean sections, and hysterectomies). In segments on “Mind,” “Love,” and “Power,” she takes on work (including the time women spend working on their appearance), estrogen, testosterone, and sorrow (with comments on the outpouring of grief from women on the death of Princess Diana). She discusses motherhood as a “genuine career option,” incest, single women (“no sex is better than bad sex”) plus fear and loathing, rearguing a much-discussed line from The Female Eunuch: “Women have very little idea of how much men hate them.” In fact, she predicts, the second wave of feminism is still “far out to sea,” and its power will be demonstrated by poor and oppressed women in countries like China, Thailand, and Iran. The text is highlighted throughout with provocative quotes from poets, writers, performers, and publications on the fringe. Little new information here, but Greer, as always, infuses the questions of “women’s liberation” with clarity, energy, and insight. An inspiring and passionate challenge to feminists and humanists alike. (First printing of 100,000)

Pub Date: May 20, 1999

ISBN: 0-375-40747-2

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2000

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WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR

A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...

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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

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GOOD ECONOMICS FOR HARD TIMES

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.

It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0

Page Count: 432

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019

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