This book is full of good sense and meaningful interviews, and it would be difficult to find a smarter or more satisfying...
In his second departure from quiz-show fare, Jennings (Because I Said So!: The Truth Behind the Myths, Tales, and Warnings Every Generation Passes Down to Its Kids, 2012, etc.) tracks the development of an abiding personal passion: comedy.
The author assembles a concise but thorough history of the sweeping trends in American humor that have led to our present situation, in which comedy serves as the cultural lingua franca, so central to our ways of interacting, consuming, and producing that it is taken for granted. In this groundswell of “laughterhood,” Jennings hears the rumblings of a not-so-distant time when we will reach “peak comedy,” an opinion he shares with Simpsons writer Tim Long: “I don’t think you can go that much faster than people are going now.” Jennings frets over oversaturation and whether the increasingly frenetic pace of comedy (measured in JPM, or jokes per minute) might feed into our widespread anxieties, with a worldwide web of people typing “that’s funny” but never really laughing, too caught up in getting the next joke to pause and develop deeper senses of humor and too busy searching for the laugh to deal with the tragic or the truly serious. In a more hopeful projection, the author sees Twitter exchanges making us all funnier, its circulating joke cycle forming the training wheels for quick thinking, the learnable part of wit. Jennings downplays his fame as a “professional ex-game show contestant” (the winningest champion on Jeopardy! to date, for all the Rip van Winkles out there). A self-professed comedy geek, he switches from the funnyman’s thinking guy to the thinking man’s funny guy depending on whether the comedy or the geek is uppermost. Let us hope that the author has geeked out in some other areas he’d like to share with the class.
This book is full of good sense and meaningful interviews, and it would be difficult to find a smarter or more satisfying treatment of a subject so evanescent and idiosyncratic as comedy.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-0058-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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PROFILES
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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