Powerful, troubling essays on the most urgent and significant of subjects. (16 b&w photos)
Fifteen illuminating feature pieces published last year by the New York Times in their series on race relations, with supplementary dialogues, commentaries, and an opinion poll.
In a sometimes self-congratulatory introduction, Times executive editor Lelyveld describes the intent of the series: “We would simply find real stories of real people—maybe no more than two or three in each narrative—whose lives and circumstances spanned this great and enduring fault line in American life.” And so they did. In venues ranging from public schools to a Seattle ferry, from a pork-processing plant to a Pentecostal church, from Fort Knox to Harlem street corners, the Times reporters dug deeply, their research sometimes lasting as long as a year, and produced a remarkable series that recorded a rich variety of voices. A black man hugs a white woman in an Atlanta church: “Man,” he says, “thirty or forty years ago I would have been hung for just touching this lady.” Although the series focuses principally on black-white relations, there are exceptions. Mirta Ojito writes sensitively about two refugees in Miami, men who had been close friends in their native Cuba but who find themselves now in different worlds because one is light, one dark. Timothy Egan profiles Gary Locke, the Chinese-American governor of Washington. And Tamar Lewin follows three teenage girls, each with a different racial history, and watches their childhood friendship disintegrate as they enter high school’s harsher world. One of the difficulties faced by virtually all the reporters was the reluctance of Americans—especially whites—to talk openly about race. As Dana Canedy comments in an afterword: “But who knows better than a journalist the consequences of unintentionally saying the wrong thing?” Some of the supplementary material—comprising nearly one-fourth of the text—is superfluous, some self-serving, some merely muddling; the most engaging and useful are the retrospective, introspective pieces by the writers and photographers.
Powerful, troubling essays on the most urgent and significant of subjects. (16 b&w photos)Pub Date: April 17, 2001
ISBN: 0-8050-6740-X
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2001
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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