A challenge to rethink “normal.”
When Mooney (The Short Bus: A Journey Beyond Normal, 2007, etc.) was a child, he was “diagnosed with multiple language-based disabilities and attention deficit disorder. When the educational psychologist broke the news to my mom and me, it was as if someone had died.” For years after, the author struggled to conform to whatever concept of “normal” he thought would help him fit in and stop feeling like a “weird kid.” In this sometimes-humorous and thought-provoking analysis of his childhood, adolescence, and college years, Mooney shares what it was like to be different from the norm, which he astutely points out “is a false standard for human value.” He provides an extensive history of how the idea of normal evolved, giving readers an eye-opening look at the standards we are often forced to live with, whether we know it or not—and whether we have learning disabilities, physical and/or mental disabilities, or in some other way do not fit the traditional picture of normal. Some of the historical research the author cites is horrifying, such as the sterilization techniques and lobotomies used on those with mental disabilities. Mooney discusses the rise of eugenics and how Hitler adopted these ideas for his own Final Solution. He expertly brings the conversation back to a more personal level when he shares how, with the help of a friend, he began to accept his differences and embrace his neurodiversity, wrote a book, and then gave lectures on the benefits of neurodiversity. He touches lightly on the current ideas about the benefits of neurodiversity in society; some readers will wish this section was longer. Throughout, the author encourages readers to reexamine the concept of normality and to embrace the idea that all humans have something to offer society.
A new, engaging, and informative perspective that redefines what “normal” should really mean.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-19016-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
Categories: EDUCATION | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
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
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
Did you like this book?
© Copyright 2023 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
