There are countless kernels of amazing achievement and courage throughout this jam-packed, engaging history.
A history of the federal push to bolster women’s rights from successive presidents since John F. Kennedy—and the resulting clashes with traditional conservative constituencies.
With the culmination of the feminist political agenda in 1977 at Houston’s National Women’s Conference, there was a swift conservative reaction, led by Illinois political activist Phyllis Schlafly and her organized minions. In this highly detailed but well-focused account, Spruill (History/Univ. of South Carolina; New Women of the New South: The Leaders of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the Southern States, 1993, etc.) reminds us that in the late 1970s, there were two women’s movements. The first, supported by both Democrats and Republicans, got its impetus from federally sponsored programs like the Kennedy Commission (1963), which revealed “the inequities in public institutions, and the vulnerable situation of homemakers.” Furthermore, writes the author in her assiduously researched narrative, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 became “one of the most important pieces of legislation in advancing gender equity, the basis for many subsequent feminist victories.” On the other hand, more conservative and religious women became alarmed by the tilt toward “liberation” from home and hearth as well as the determination by “libbers” to work alongside men, countenance abortion, and, shockingly, love each other. (The support of lesbianism would rive even the most liberal feminist agenda.) For the feminists, the move to become a party with real political clout occurred with the election of Bella Abzug to Congress in 1971 and the forming of the National Women’s Political Caucus around the leadership of Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm, and others. As women made staggering inroads into government agencies and other areas under the administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford (largely thanks to his wife, Betty), the anti-feminists staged a backlash by blocking the Comprehensive Child Development Act of 1971 (publicly funded child care) as the “horrifying first step on the slippery slope toward a godless government invasion of the family.”
There are countless kernels of amazing achievement and courage throughout this jam-packed, engaging history.Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63286-314-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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