Next book

THE PORNOGRAPHY WARS

THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE OF AMERICA’S OBSCENE OBSESSION

An intellectually stimulating read for porn fans and critics alike.

A thought-provoking examination of pornography in America.

“Rather than direct readers to a single truth about porn, this book instead challenges the myths that surround pornography itself and the people who have something to say about it,” writes Burke, a sociology professor and author of Christians Under Covers: Evangelicals and Sexual Pleasure on the Internet. From anti-vice activist Anthony Comstock to Inka Winter, the creator of ForPlay Films, “an all-woman porn production company,” the author introduces us to a plethora of interesting characters. Beginning with her own upbringing and difficulties as a “sexual outsider, queer without yet having a label,” Burke discusses the countless debates about what constitutes porn before moving on to evaluate the arguments on both sides. The author ably unravels a broad set of social and political values that the porn debate evokes, especially the moralizing facade of anti-porn arguments: “Antipornography activists suggest that the reason women participate in pornography is that they think it is good for them when actually it is not.” It’s clear that Burke wants readers to understand that sex and pornography go beyond the individual, contending that “the capitalist system provides constraints and opportunities for the internet sex industry and for pornography debates.” She is also thorough in her deconstruction of the way that pro-porn activists deal with racial iconography and violence in porn narratives. The book is well balanced and rigorously researched, featuring dozens of opinions from across the spectrum of debate, and Burke does her best to keep her own biases in check while illustrating her expertise in the topic. “What I observed over five years of research for this book is that fighters in the porn wars do not assume that if they fight hard enough, the other side will wave its white flag in defeat,” she writes. “The porn wars are fought not because either side perceives imminent victory, but because individuals believe it is the right thing to do.”

An intellectually stimulating read for porn fans and critics alike.

Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023

ISBN: 978-1-63557-736-5

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Review Posted Online: April 26, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022

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

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 70


Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


  • Kirkus Reviews'
    Best Books Of 2023


  • New York Times Bestseller

Next book

ELON MUSK

Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 70


Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


  • Kirkus Reviews'
    Best Books Of 2023


  • New York Times Bestseller

A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.

To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.

Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.

Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023

ISBN: 9781982181284

Page Count: 688

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023

Close Quickview