A teacher and leadership consultant takes readers into the crevices of a cult.
Growing up in New York in the 1970s, debut author Kohn had few points of reference through which she could make sense of the world around her. She and her brother, Robbie, were caught in the throes of their parents’ belief in the Unification Church, founded by a self-appointed messiah, Sun Myung Moon (followers were called Moonies). “As a kid you misinterpret the nasty things that happen to and around you, and you somehow believe you’re to blame,” writes the author. “As a young adult, I internalized this more and more. As an older adult, I still can. I get lost in darkness and desperation. I can feel unworthy or damaged or hopeless. I have my scars and insecurities, my fears that feel like they’ll engulf me. I can be washed over with shame.” The austere tone of this introductory passage doesn’t quite represent the vivacity with which Kohn writes about her struggle breaking out of the mold in which her parents trapped her. The author explores her teenage years, when she interacted with peers who knew nothing about her strict behavioral guidelines, the boyfriends who came in and out of her life as her dogma changed, and her shifting relationship with her father. Some qualify the Unification Church as a cult, and Kohn appears to agree with that line of thought. But this is not just an inside-the-cult book; this is the story of a woman who attempted everything in her power to get out of it. “I learned on my journey through self-help programs that I had experienced covert abuse,” writes the author. “Too much had happened to me and around me, and much of it had been off-kilter.”
If writing is an evacuation tool to process and understand abuse, Kohn has done an excellent job of producing a text that oozes with honesty and truth.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-942762-44-7
Page Count: 242
Publisher: Heliotrope Books
Review Posted Online: June 18, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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Noted jazz and pop record producer Thiele offers a chatty autobiography. Aided by record-business colleague Golden, Thiele traces his career from his start as a ``pubescent, novice jazz record producer'' in the 1940s through the '50s, when he headed Coral, Dot, and Roulette Records, and the '60s, when he worked for ABC and ran the famous Impulse! jazz label. At Coral, Thiele championed the work of ``hillbilly'' singer Buddy Holly, although the only sessions he produced with Holly were marred by saccharine strings. The producer specialized in more mainstream popsters like the irrepressibly perky Teresa Brewer (who later became his fourth wife) and the bubble-machine muzak-meister Lawrence Welk. At Dot, Thiele was instrumental in recording Jack Kerouac's famous beat- generation ramblings to jazz accompaniment (recordings that Dot's president found ``pornographic''), while also overseeing a steady stream of pop hits. He then moved to the Mafia-controlled Roulette label, where he observed the ``silk-suited, pinky-ringed'' entourage who frequented the label's offices. Incredibly, however, Thiele remembers the famously hard-nosed Morris Levy, who ran the label and was eventually convicted of extortion, as ``one of the kindest, most warm-hearted, and classiest music men I have ever known.'' At ABC/Impulse!, Thiele oversaw the classic recordings of John Coltrane, although he is the first to admit that Coltrane essentially produced his own sessions. Like many producers of the day, Thiele participated in the ownership of publishing rights to some of the songs he recorded; he makes no apology for this practice, which he calls ``entirely appropriate and without any ethical conflicts.'' A pleasant, if not exactly riveting, memoir that will be of most interest to those with a thirst for cocktail-hour stories of the record biz. (25 halftones, not seen)
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-19-508629-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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