Such unsupportable assertions, heartfelt though they may be, undermine the authors’ considerable research.
How sisterhood has flourished throughout history.
While male friendships have been “extolled…as the noblest form of human attachment,” women’s bonds, cultural historian Yalom (How the French Invented Love, 2012, etc.) and Brown assert, have been overlooked and even disparaged. Aiming to rectify this slight, the authors chronicle abundant evidence of women’s friendships, focusing on communities (nuns, for example, quilting circles, and the Lowell, Massachusetts, factory girls) and particular pairings: the “loving friendship” between German mystic Hildegard von Bingen and her disciple Richardis von Stade; Teresa of Avila and her sister Carmelite Ana de San Bartolomé; Mme. de Sévigné and Mme. de La Fayette, 17th-century French salonnieres; American patriots Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren; memoirist Mme. Roland and Sophie Grandchamp, who described their relationship as “a mutual rapture of the soul”; reformers Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr, who co-founded Hull House; and many others. Yalom and Brown examine bonds forged at college, among working women, between feminist activists, and the comradeship, as they put it, among divorced women. The authors wear their scholarship lightly, creating a lively narrative. Unfortunately, their enthusiasm leads them to make extravagant, unfounded claims: friendships formed “during political upheaval and war,” they conclude, “are among the strongest experienced by humankind.” Women’s friendships, characterized by affection, self-revelation, physical contact, and interdependence, can change the world: the “power, and often the wisdom, of what women seek and find in friendship could lead future generations into lives of dignity, hope, and peaceful coexistence.” Women, the authors insist, “will continue to show the world how to be friends” and help to create “a world in which the strengths of the friendly sex imbue society with greater concern for the well-being of every person.”
Such unsupportable assertions, heartfelt though they may be, undermine the authors’ considerable research.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-226550-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
A sleek, vital history that effectively shows how, “from the outset, inequality was enforced with the whip, the gun, and the...
A concise, alternate history of the United States “about how people across the hemisphere wove together antislavery, anticolonial, pro-freedom, and pro-working-class movements against tremendous obstacles.”
In the latest in the publisher’s ReVisioning American History series, Ortiz (History/Univ. of Florida; Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920, 2005, etc.) examines U.S. history through the lens of African-American and Latinx activists. Much of the American history taught in schools is limited to white America, leaving out the impact of non-European immigrants and indigenous peoples. The author corrects that error in a thorough look at the debt of gratitude we owe to the Haitian Revolution, the Mexican War of Independence, and the Cuban War of Independence, all struggles that helped lead to social democracy. Ortiz shows the history of the workers for what it really was: a fatal intertwining of slavery, racial capitalism, and imperialism. He states that the American Revolution began as a war of independence and became a war to preserve slavery. Thus, slavery is the foundation of American prosperity. With the end of slavery, imperialist America exported segregation laws and labor discrimination abroad. As we moved into Cuba, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico, we stole their land for American corporations and used the Army to enforce draconian labor laws. This continued in the South and in California. The rise of agriculture could not have succeeded without cheap labor. Mexican workers were often preferred because, if they demanded rights, they could just be deported. Convict labor worked even better. The author points out the only way success has been gained is by organizing; a great example was the “Day without Immigrants” in 2006. Of course, as Ortiz rightly notes, much more work is necessary, especially since Jim Crow and Juan Crow are resurging as each political gain is met with “legal” countermeasures.
A sleek, vital history that effectively shows how, “from the outset, inequality was enforced with the whip, the gun, and the United States Constitution.”Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8070-1310-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
Never especially challenging or provocative but pleasant enough light reading.
Former Dirty Jobs star Rowe serves up a few dozen brief human-interest stories.
Building on his popular podcast, the author “tells some true stories you probably don’t know, about some famous people you probably do.” Some of those stories, he allows, have been subject to correction, just as on his TV show he was “corrected on windmills and oil derricks, coal mines and construction sites, frack tanks, pig farms, slime lines, and lumber mills.” Still, it’s clear that he takes pains to get things right even if he’s not above a few too-obvious groaners, writing about erections (of skyscrapers, that is, and, less elegantly, of pigs) here and Joan Rivers (“the Bonnie Parker of comedy”) there, working the likes of Bob Dylan, William Randolph Hearst, and John Wayne into the discourse. The most charming pieces play on Rowe’s own foibles. In one, he writes of having taken a soft job as a “caretaker”—in quotes—of a country estate with few clear lines of responsibility save, as he reveals, humoring the resident ghost. As the author notes on his website, being a TV host gave him great skills in “talking for long periods without saying anything of substance,” and some of his stories are more filler than compelling narrative. In others, though, he digs deeper, as when he writes of Jason Everman, a rock guitarist who walked away from two spectacularly successful bands (Nirvana and Soundgarden) in order to serve as a special forces operative: “If you thought that Pete Best blew his chance with the Beatles, consider this: the first band Jason bungled sold 30 million records in a single year.” Speaking of rock stars, Rowe does a good job with the oft-repeated matter of Charlie Manson’s brief career as a songwriter: “No one can say if having his song stolen by the Beach Boys pushed Charlie over the edge,” writes the author, but it can’t have helped.
Never especially challenging or provocative but pleasant enough light reading.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-982130-85-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
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