A thoughtful and entertaining analysis of why so many still want to ditch their clothes and let it all hang out.
An open-minded writer drops his skivvies at various locations around the world in an amusing and earnest attempt to understand the appeal of nudism.
Smith (Raw: A Love Story, 2013, etc.) first entered the world of stark naked nudism to the beat of Rick James’ “Super Freak” at a Southern California resort dedicated to the nude lifestyle. Thus began a globe-trotting journey that would take him to some of the weirdest and wildest clothing-verboten resorts in the world. He relates how he hiked in the nude, sailed in the nude, and munched on croissants in the nude. However, despite the novelty and sensory overload, the author’s chief impression is one of bemused and blasé indifference. “I never would’ve thought seeing a hundred naked people around the swimming pool would be dullsville, but it is,” he writes. The situation was racier in Cap d’Agde, France. When night fell, the nature-loving denizens of the curious seaside community emerged from their apartments dressed in clothes, albeit predominately six-inch pumps, leather skirts, and fishnet undies appropriate for an evening of swinging debauchery. With solid reporting and scholarship, Smith delves into the genesis of the global nudism movement, constantly enlivening material that could have gotten stale. It turns out that the enduring American version of nudism has its origins in pre–World War II Germany, where even the powers that be had to acquiesce to its popularity among the public. Even today, the author finds that no matter how tolerant or enlightened they may have become, societies must still struggle with just how much nudity is acceptable. Is it tolerable to allow a naked man to shop for dinner at the local market? What about his rights? Smith makes you laugh and think.
A thoughtful and entertaining analysis of why so many still want to ditch their clothes and let it all hang out.Pub Date: June 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8021-2351-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2015
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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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