A standout in the monograph memoir subgenre, where subject guide meets personal essay.
A humorist unites a neophyte’s history of modern dance with his own unlikely dance memoir.
Participatory journalist Alford (Would It Kill You To Stop Doing That?: A Modern Guide to Manners, 2010, etc.) ponders the social functions of dance in the 20th century, using his own late-blooming passion as a guide to inquiry. After a mostly danceless youth—excepting cotillion lessons and bouncing from New England socialite balls to Studio 54 as a teenager, plus coming out in New York in the 1980s—the author first began obsessing over dance in his mid-50s. Zumba lessons and late-night living room sessions proved gateway drugs to more esoteric dance pleasures, including the “ecstatic dance” of 5Rhythms and “contact improv” (think Pilobolus), all of which occasioned a lot of touching and feeling, followed by aches and injuries. Alford finds material by immersing himself in curious situations and then filleting his experiences into wry narratives. He recounts his faltering steps toward proficiency with withering self-deprecation: “To admit that you’re a practitioner of the leaping arts is to open yourself to inspection on the fronts of economic status, carnality, taste, self-involvement, and body mass.” Along the way, the author folds in facts and anecdotes about legends such as Gene Kelly, an aggressive pugilist, and the winsome Arthur Murray, whose mail-order instructional footprints tutored many aspiring rug-cutters in the dance-crazed 1920s. Opinionated overviews of famous dancers, notable performances, choreography choices, and outmoded dance idioms make it nearly impossible to read the book without a search window open for video evidence (see the grizzly bear, the bunny hug, the cakewalk, Isadora Duncan). A keen self-editor adept at meeting word counts for magazine stories, Alford makes efficient use of the long form, refracting histories and theories of dance through his own hilarious escapades and tracing the darker themes of reluctance, humiliation, and shame involved in the medium in an effort to make sense of why we dance and watch others dance.
A standout in the monograph memoir subgenre, where subject guide meets personal essay.Pub Date: June 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2225-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A heartfelt if somewhat unsurprising view of old age by the former president. Carter (Living Faith, 1996, etc.) succinctly evaluates the evolution and current status of federal policies concerning the elderly (including a balanced appraisal of the difficulties facing the Social Security system). He also meditates, while drawing heavily on autobiographical anecdotes, on the possibilities for exploration and intellectual and spiritual growth in old age. There are few lightning bolts to dazzle in his prescriptions (cultivate family ties; pursue the restorative pleasures of hobbies and socially minded activities). Yet the warmth and frankness of Carter’s remarks prove disarming. Given its brevity, the work is more of a call to senior citizens to reconsider how best to live life than it is a guide to any of the details involved.
Pub Date: Oct. 26, 1998
ISBN: 0-345-42592-8
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1998
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