With self-deprecating humor and searing honesty, Montreal-based feature writer and book reviewer Yanofsky (Mordecai and Me: An Appreciation of a Kind,
2003, etc.) reveals the painful frustration and the powerful bond of love between him, his wife and their 11-year-old autistic son, Jonah. The author explains why he decided to add his family's story to the massive collection of books already available on the subject: “The uninspiring everydayness of living with autism, its routine weirdness, its unbearable bearableness, its incremental ups and downs, is what so often gets unstated.” He writes of the pain of “coping and not coping at the same time,” and watching people, including himself, undervalue his son. Yanofsky relates the difficulty of knowing which experts to consult, whether to pursue dietary cures or behavioral therapy, even whether to consider the autistic spectrum as a disability or merely a different way of perceiving the world. At age 4, Jonah was diagnosed at the high end of the spectrum, and Yanofsky and his wife chose applied behavioral analysis therapy, an exacting discipline that requires parents to participate along with a therapy team. Stories about bad animals—the inspiration for the title—became metaphors shared by Jonah and his father as they discussed his behavior and the ups and downs of their relationship with each other. By the end of the book, Jonah has decided to rename the animals: “Worst-Monkey-Ever” became “Jumpy the Monkey,” and the monkey’s father, formerly “Worst-Daddy-Ever,” became “Grumpy the Daddy.”
An eloquent memoir of Jonah's sometimes-almost-imperceptible growth, increasing social skills and developing self-awareness that also addresses the broader issues involved with parenthood.Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-61145-414-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2012
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | PSYCHOLOGY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
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The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | PSYCHOLOGY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY
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