A simultaneously funny and informative memoir about the wonder of the human body.
A journalist/author explores the whys and hows of the female body as she confronts the “volatile and apprehensive relationship” she has with her own body parts.
Altman (Thanks for Coming: One Young Woman's Quest for an Orgasm, 2009, etc.) grew up with two hippie parents who eschewed all bodily enhancements. Her mother “never wore any image-altering materials” and never shaved; her father “turned his nose up at anything he deemed unnatural,” including perfume. This led to the author’s hyperawareness of corporeal expectations for women and the nagging sense that she was somehow a misfit. Drawing on research and interviews, Altman considers everything about the female body that society often shames women into hiding. In “The Top Half,” the author discusses some of her favorite top-of-the-body fixations, such as body hair and its removal. Her investigations did nothing to cure her of her own depilatory compulsions, but at the same time, they revealed that the reasons behind shaving, waxing, and tweezing were rooted in everything from cultural/patriarchal norms (which equated hairlessness to sensuality) to biology (which equated hairiness to age and infertility). Altman then goes on to ponder other personal issues—e.g., hairy nipples, overactive sweat glands, protruding belly buttons, head lice, and the inability to vocalize sexual pleasure—with which she has struggled. In the second section of the book, “The Bottom Half,” Altman considers what inevitably draws dogs to the human vulva, why buttocks, the site of the grossest of all bodily functions, are also “one of the most sexualized parts of the human body,” and why society too often maligns features of the female body like labial lips (the so-called “camel toe”) and menstruation. By turns neurotically perverse and hilarious, Altman’s doodle-illustrated book is not just a memoir of her own quest to embrace physical imperfection. It is also an endearingly outrageous attempt to demystify the female body while shedding light on the causes of female corporeal insecurities.
A simultaneously funny and informative memoir about the wonder of the human body.Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-57483-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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
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