Next book

SEXUAL ARRANGEMENTS

MARRIAGE AND THE TEMPTATION OF INFIDELITY

The thesis of this most interesting book by a Cambridge University psychologist (Richards) and a sociologist (Reibstein) is that the institution of modern marriage is ``inherently unstable'' because it's based on a set of impossible ideals. According to the authors (who spent ten years conducting 200 interviews in America and Britain for their study), the Anglo- American marriage model ascendant today is sexually exclusive, intimate, and companionate—in marked difference to, say, Victorian marriage, which had more to do with the exchange of property and the tactic acceptance of infidelity (at least on the man's part). Reibstein and Richards believe that adultery can be studied only in this context, and that modern marriage impels spouses toward affairs that must be kept secret—a secrecy the authors consider more damaging than the affairs themselves. Fascinating, seemingly contradictory facts are noted along the way: that most adulterers are deeply attached to the idea of a sexually exclusive marriage even though they play around; that sexual frequency and satisfaction levels drop in marriage despite an increased emphasis on fidelity. The source of the sexually exclusive, intimate marriage model is traced back to the primary, mother-child relationship, and gender differences regarding how people pursue and feel about sex are studied as well—with a general disavowal of biological causes for these differences. Three types of marriages are given as a kind of menu of choices: the companionate, sexually exclusive model; open marriage (still a rare bird); and the segmented version, in which spouses seek from other sources whatever their partners can't provide. The authors do a lot of dot-connecting to substantiate their thesis and aren't scrupulous about identifying their sources. Nor do they move beyond criticism to point the way to something better. But in dispassionately assessing the nature and effects of marriage as our culture practices it, they reach the intellectual—if not the moral—nub of the matter. A decidedly challenging book.

Pub Date: Aug. 25, 1993

ISBN: 0-684-19540-2

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1993

Next book

A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979

ISBN: 0061965588

Page Count: 772

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979

Next book

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

Close Quickview