by Gina Barreca ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 29, 2005
Amusing and eye-opening, if flawed.
An engaging chronicle of Barreca’s ups and downs as one of the first female students at Dartmouth.
Women faced plenty of trials in the just-barely-coed-Ivy-League of the mid-1970s, writes Barreca (English Literature and Feminist Theory/Univ. of Connecticut). Male students leeringly asked if she was a lesbian (“you learned to answer, ‘Are you my alternative?’ ”) and cluelessly mocked Fear of Flying when a daring female prof assigned it. Barreca also had to contend with class issues. At ultra-preppy Dartmouth, she was the only student whose last name ended in a vowel. She wore cowboy boots, while the other coeds opted for Talbots and Laura Ashley. Her blue-collar relatives back home wondered whether she’d really gone to New Hampshire for college—or just snuck off to have an illegitimate baby. Fans of Barreca’s work (Perfect Husbands, and Other Fairy Tales, 1993, etc.), which ranges from scholarly to pop but always includes humor, will expect hilarity here, and from the alliterative, cheeky title to almost the very end, she does not disappoint. (The last few pages, where she recounts the end of college and her first trip back to Dartmouth 12 years later, veer toward the maudlin.) Emulating the delightful miscellany of a 19th-century scrapbook, Barreca includes extracts from the diary she kept as an undergrad, photographs, and copies of a few report cards and other official college communiqués. This approach has its limitations. Subtitle notwithstanding, her latest is less “personal history” and more straight autobiography. Had Barreca made more of an effort to contextualize her experience—a few pages on the history of women’s higher education in America, say, or even a broader treatment of the Ivies going coed—the result would have been stronger. And her habit of referring to herself in third person (“She arrives in Hanover to discover there is more to learn about the college and its traditions . . . than she ever could have imagined”) is an annoying distraction.
Amusing and eye-opening, if flawed.Pub Date: April 29, 2005
ISBN: 1-58465-299-3
Page Count: 168
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2005
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by Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2018
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
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by Bari Weiss ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 10, 2019
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
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