Nothing eye-opening, but a worthy effort.
No, it’s not that kind of sex writing—which is probably for the best.
The second annual volume in this series is actually a serious compilation of nonfiction pieces originally published in American and British print and online publications. Their tone ranges from abstract to extremely personal, illuminating to embarrassing. The engagingly quirky mishmash of topics begins with “The Big Oooooohh!,” by Jonathan Margolis, who concludes that “the golden age of the orgasm may yet arrive,” followed by Katha Pollitt’s appreciative obituary of the fearless, infuriatingly contradictory feminist shocktrooper and anti-porn advocate Andrea Dworkin. About half the pieces seem worthy of inclusion—a great average for a magazine or website, but somewhat low for a “best of” book. Among the serious articles is David France’s standout “The Invention of Patient Zero,” which plots in sharp detail the chain of misinformation that led to the AIDS “superbug” panic. There isn’t much that’s off-limits, as evidenced by Sarah Klein’s pedestrian but still fascinating piece on designer vaginal surgery, “Does This Make My Labia Look Fat?” The more controversial entries here are a pair of first-person defenses of the writer’s particular kink: Sebastian Horsely explains his preference for sleeping with prostitutes, in “The Brothel Keeper,” while Polly Peachum’s “Violence in the Garden” attempts to make people understand how she can live in a completely subservient slave-master relationship and still call herself a feminist. It’s not the subject matter that sinks these two, but rather the self-congratulatory tone and limited talent of the writers. Not many big names here, which may explain why the editor bothered with Dave Barry’s throwaway column, “Sex, Guys, and Fruitflies”; fellow bestseller Augusten Burroughs shows to better advantage with the gutter poetry of “Last Rites,” which concludes the book.
Nothing eye-opening, but a worthy effort.Pub Date: Dec. 13, 2005
ISBN: 1-56025-772-5
Page Count: 286
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2005
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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