A satisfying journey through 1970s sexual politics and the lands of the southernmost part of the Earth.
In this debut travel memoir, a pioneering female geologist explores the topography of South America and the shifting landscape of women in the sciences.
Imagine a young woman with her back against a sheer rock cliff, unable to climb to safety from the reach of fast approaching, freezing waters. This is the opening to Winslow’s account of her Antarctic expeditions and her journey into both the largely uncharted territory of the region and the male-dominated field of geology. In the 1970s, the attitude toward women scientists was tolerant at best; sexism ran rampant, from doubts about female physical strength to overt sexual advances from colleagues. Winslow (Earth Sciences/City College of New York) battled these and other obstacles to become a trailblazing geologist, exploring the punishing terrain that Charles Darwin made famous. During the five excursions chronicled in the book, Winslow keeps pace with the accompanying male scientists: She climbs (and falls from) cliff faces; survives roiling seas; and even pushes the all-male crews into uncharted waters (in one case, convincing them to illegally let the scientists off on an island belonging to then-dictator Augusto Pinochet), to the point where the sailors fondly dub her Capitana Margy. Winslow admirably pairs scientific jargon with entertaining anecdotes, detailing both her field work and her experiences as a woman with precision and humor. That said, the strength of the book lies in her straightforward descriptions, rather than in strong literary embellishment. Winslow is also careful not to let her gender be the primary focus of the story, but the physical and emotional demands of her work make her accomplishments that much more impressive. As she gamely puts it, “there had been few role models for women scientists, and they fell into only three categories: one of the boys, the camp wife and the mascot…I worked out to get fit enough to keep up with the pack, but not to beat anyone to the finish line.”
A satisfying journey through 1970s sexual politics and the lands of the southernmost part of the Earth.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2012
ISBN: 978-1475954326
Page Count: 238
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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