Despite repetitive language, this anthology will appeal to fans of women’s short-form confessional nonfiction.
Women writers present vastly varying perspectives and journeys of the meaning, cost, and fulfillment of their wishes.
Kahn and McMasters, editors of This Is the Place, take a similar tack in this second compendium of personal essays. Their introduction lays out their sincere yet sappy aims—e.g., “to create a space for women to interrogate and luxuriate in their desire.” The editors cast a notably wide net, although several essays would have benefitted from tighter editing. While the majority of pieces are engaging, frequent unoriginal word choices wear thin—desire appears nearly 250 times. The contributors explore myriad topics related to wanting objects (a $500 pair of cowboy boots, a dildo) in addition to experiences, which run the gamut from criminal to spiritual but are predominantly sexual. Tracing longings to their roots, many of the essayists deploy powerful metaphors that possess the capacity to connect women to themselves. The cowboy boots, for example, signify far more than footwear. “The opposite of a cowboy is an Indian woman,” writes Rena Priest. “I exist in the aftermath and ruin wrought by cowboys….I desire the power available to the self-assured cowboys of the American West.” In a stunning consideration of the enjoyment she takes in being sexually degraded by her White husband, Keyanah B. Nurse both implicates and empowers herself: “I center my own pleasure.” Long stymied by self-doubt, Domenica Ruta acknowledges craving “that feeling of control I first discovered in my abortion…the knowledge that my body would do exactly what I wanted it to do.” In an excellent study of Thomas Merton’s thorny relationship with his yearnings, Amanda Petrusich writes, “It’s a brutal cycle—we want things, we get things, we want more things, we get them, we want more.” By turns piercing and bloated, the book’s core magnetism lies in its breadth of voices and their respective depths. Other contributors include Larissa Pham, Karen Russell, Lisa Taddeo, Camille Dungy, and Melissa Febos.
Despite repetitive language, this anthology will appeal to fans of women’s short-form confessional nonfiction.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2023
ISBN: 9781646220113
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Catapult
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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