A scholarly study conducted with dignity and thoroughness.
A sociological study focusing on the experiences of 11 characters toiling in the underbelly of a vibrant American city.
Inspired by the seminal work of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (The Weight of the World), Auyero (Latin American Sociology/Univ. of Texas; Patients of the State: The Politics of Waiting in Argentina, 2012, etc.) invited his students to try a similar study of their local Austin “underclass” to show how external forces in society—low wages, lack of health care, racism, gender inequality, being undocumented and trying to attend college, etc.—have adversely affected the lives of real people. Each of the students chose a subject dear to his or her own area of research, spent much time with and interviewed the subject extensively, and fashioned a readable narrative of the subject’s life that underscores the chronic challenges that erode the well-beings of so many Americans—especially “those living at the bottom.” After Maggie Tate’s excellent historical overview of Austin, which puts the city in context as an attractive, creative boom economy with enormous disparity in wealth, each contributor presents the plight of his or her subject. They include Mexican-born Santos, who looked back on a hard life “working for others” and some middle-class success and was threatened by an injury in a car accident that left his uninsured family in near financial ruin; Clarissa, a middle-age, white restaurant worker who was rendered homeless by an accident that exposed her uninsured vulnerability to hospitals and lawyers; Inés, whose delinquent daughter fell into the grips of the state’s Disciplinary Alternative Education Program; Raven, who moved from waitressing to stripping to escorting for the money, slipping into drug addiction and abusive relationships; and Nepalese refugee Kumar, a cab driver who lied about his identity to keep customers from abusing him. Engaging and accessible, the essays dovetail with today’s debates on social inequality and immigration.
A scholarly study conducted with dignity and thoroughness.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4773-0365-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Univ. of Texas
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
However charily one should apply the word, a beautiful book, an unconditionally involving memoir for our time or any time.
Maya Angelou is a natural writer with an inordinate sense of life and she has written an exceptional autobiographical narrative which retrieves her first sixteen years from "the general darkness just beyond the great blinkers of childhood."
Her story is told in scenes, ineluctably moving scenes, from the time when she and her brother were sent by her fancy living parents to Stamps, Arkansas, and a grandmother who had the local Store. Displaced they were and "If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat." But alternating with all the pain and terror (her rape at the age of eight when in St. Louis With her mother) and humiliation (a brief spell in the kitchen of a white woman who refused to remember her name) and fear (of a lynching—and the time they buried afflicted Uncle Willie under a blanket of vegetables) as well as all the unanswered and unanswerable questions, there are affirmative memories and moments: her charming brother Bailey; her own "unshakable God"; a revival meeting in a tent; her 8th grade graduation; and at the end, when she's sixteen, the birth of a baby. Times When as she says "It seemed that the peace of a day's ending was an assurance that the covenant God made with children, Negroes and the crippled was still in effect."
However charily one should apply the word, a beautiful book, an unconditionally involving memoir for our time or any time.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1969
ISBN: 0375507892
Page Count: 235
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1969
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.
Four decades after Watergate shook America, journalist Woodward (The Price of Politics, 2012, etc.) returns to the scandal to profile Alexander Butterfield, the Richard Nixon aide who revealed the existence of the Oval Office tapes and effectively toppled the presidency.
Of all the candidates to work in the White House, Butterfield was a bizarre choice. He was an Air Force colonel and wanted to serve in Vietnam. By happenstance, his colleague H.R. Haldeman helped Butterfield land a job in the Nixon administration. For three years, Butterfield worked closely with the president, taking on high-level tasks and even supervising the installation of Nixon’s infamous recording system. The writing here is pure Woodward: a visual, dialogue-heavy, blow-by-blow account of Butterfield’s tenure. The author uses his long interviews with Butterfield to re-create detailed scenes, which reveal the petty power plays of America’s most powerful men. Yet the book is a surprisingly funny read. Butterfield is passive, sensitive, and dutiful, the very opposite of Nixon, who lets loose a constant stream of curses, insults, and nonsensical bluster. Years later, Butterfield seems conflicted about his role in such an eccentric presidency. “I’m not trying to be a Boy Scout and tell you I did it because it was the right thing to do,” Butterfield concedes. It is curious to see Woodward revisit an affair that now feels distantly historical, but the author does his best to make the story feel urgent and suspenseful. When Butterfield admitted to the Senate Select Committee that he knew about the listening devices, he felt its significance. “It seemed to Butterfield there was absolute silence and no one moved,” writes Woodward. “They were still and quiet as if they were witnessing a hinge of history slowly swinging open….It was as if a bare 10,000 volt cable was running through the room, and suddenly everyone touched it at once.”
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1644-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2015
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