An unapologetically feel-good human-interest look at the 1998 American winners of the first Olympic gold medal ever awarded in women’s ice hockey. Turco, a teacher in the Women’s Studies Program at Dartmouth College, accompanied the team as they trained for and competed in the Olympic games at Nagano, Japan. Her account of events is intermingled with the coach’s and players’ thoughts; particularly affecting are the days leading to the final cuts of the player roster and the account of the gold-medal final against the team’s arch rival, Canada. Team camaraderie and the ideal of sportsmanship are discussed more than actual hockey play. Even though there are entries from one player’s journal and personal details are given about each woman, no individual voice stands out. Nearly all the players are portrayed as attractive, intelligent girls-next-door, who played nobly for the love of the sport, team, country, and with a sense of history. These women were beneficiaries of Title IX legislation, enacted in 1972, which called for sex equity in educational programs or activities receiving federal financial assistance. They had unqualified support from family, boyfriends, and coaches. They were born believing that “girls can do anything, “and were far enough beyond the pioneering years of women’s sports that, while training, they learned more from the experiences of Muhammad Ali than Wilma Rudolph or Billie Jean King. But in her preface, Turco stresses that although the number of girls playing high school sports has grown (from 294,000 in 1971 to 2,472,043 in 1996—97), the cultural and financial battles for opportunities for females on the playing fields remain, particularly in the collegiate and professional realms. The epilogue’s recap of the team’s recognition and honors after the Olympics gives hope that their memorable gold-winning achievement will help advance women’s sports at all levels. Crashing the Net is best not for hockey diehards, but for the female reader or general sports fan looking for modern models of inspiration. (illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-019264-X
Page Count: 256
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
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
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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