A vociferous, highly motivational call to arms for the feminist movement.
A striking anti-patriarchal manifesto.
Written “with enough rage to fuel a rocket,” the second book from Egyptian American activist Eltahawy (Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution, 2015) presents a platform of female empowerment and gender equality supported by seven essential traits (anger, attention, profanity, ambition, power, violence, and lust) every woman should have in her feminist arsenal. The author advises women on how to individually resist and collectively deconstruct society’s “universal and normalized” patriarchal hierarchy by employing an interlocking series of “sins,” traditionally tabooed beliefs about women’s outward expressions of contrary opinion or personal power. Eltahawy’s opening is strong, with a chapter on how anger and rage are key components in the fight alongside ambition, sexual expression “outside the teachings of heteronormativity,” and an insistence that attention be paid to female voices instead of promoting efforts to silence them. The section on power seeks to engage women in business and social leadership. Eltahawy is at her most controversial when discussing what she believes are the leveling benefits of physical violence in the face of patriarchal crimes. Sprinkled throughout the narrative are moving personal stories, histories, and profiles that further reinforce her plan to dismantle the rampant injustices against women. The author’s prose is feverishly enthusiastic and laser-focused, powered by teenage emotional trauma from repeated sexual assaults while on pilgrimages to Mecca, where she was warned to stay silent but ultimately vocalized her outrage. She channels the rage about her violations toward the empowerment of other women in their embrace of feminism that is “robust, aggressive, and unapologetic…a feminism that defies, disobeys, and disrupts the patriarchy.” Her urgent narrative encourages women of all ages to resist classic compartmentalization and to raise their voices and demand equality within every sector of society. “Let us always tell girls they can be more than,” she writes.
A vociferous, highly motivational call to arms for the feminist movement.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8070-1381-6
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
Harari delivers yet another tour de force.
A highly instructive exploration of “current affairs and…the immediate future of human societies.”
Having produced an international bestseller about human origins (Sapiens, 2015, etc.) and avoided the sophomore jinx writing about our destiny (Homo Deus, 2017), Harari (History/Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem) proves that he has not lost his touch, casting a brilliantly insightful eye on today’s myriad crises, from Trump to terrorism, Brexit to big data. As the author emphasizes, “humans think in stories rather than in facts, numbers, or equations, and the simpler the story, the better. Every person, group, and nation has its own tales and myths.” Three grand stories once predicted the future. World War II eliminated the fascist story but stimulated communism for a few decades until its collapse. The liberal story—think democracy, free markets, and globalism—reigned supreme for a decade until the 20th-century nasties—dictators, populists, and nationalists—came back in style. They promote jingoism over international cooperation, vilify the opposition, demonize immigrants and rival nations, and then win elections. “A bit like the Soviet elites in the 1980s,” writes Harari, “liberals don’t understand how history deviates from its preordained course, and they lack an alternative prism through which to interpret reality.” The author certainly understands, and in 21 painfully astute essays, he delivers his take on where our increasingly “post-truth” world is headed. Human ingenuity, which enables us to control the outside world, may soon re-engineer our insides, extend life, and guide our thoughts. Science-fiction movies get the future wrong, if only because they have happy endings. Most readers will find Harari’s narrative deliciously reasonable, including his explanation of the stories (not actually true but rational) of those who elect dictators, populists, and nationalists. His remedies for wildly disruptive technology (biotech, infotech) and its consequences (climate change, mass unemployment) ring true, provided nations act with more good sense than they have shown throughout history.
Harari delivers yet another tour de force.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-51217-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
If that promise of clarity is what awaits us all, then death doesn’t seem so awful, and that is a great gift from Sacks. A...
Valediction from the late neurologist and writer Sacks (On the Move: A Life, 2015, etc.).
In this set of four short essays, much-forwarded opinion pieces from the New York Times, the author ponders illness, specifically the metastatic cancer that spread from eye to liver and in doing so foreclosed any possibility of treatment. His brief reflections on that unfortunate development give way to, yes, gratitude as he examines the good things that he has experienced over what, in the end, turned out to be a rather long life after all, lasting 82 years. To be sure, Sacks has regrets about leaving the world, not least of them not being around to see “a thousand…breakthroughs in the physical and biological sciences,” as well as the night sky sprinkled with stars and the yellow legal pads on which he worked sprinkled with words. Sacks works a few familiar tropes and elaborates others. Charmingly, he reflects on his habit since childhood of associating each year of his life with the element of corresponding atomic weight on the periodic table; given polonium’s “intense, murderous radioactivity,” then perhaps 84 isn’t all that it’s cut out to be. There are some glaring repetitions here, unfortunate given the intense brevity of this book, such as his twice citing Nathaniel Hawthorne’s call to revel in “intercourse with the world”—no, not that kind. Yet his thoughts overall—while not as soul-stirringly inspirational as the similar reflections of Randy Pausch or as bent on chasing down the story as Christopher Hitchens’ last book—are shaped into an austere beauty, as when Sacks writes of being able in his final moments to “see my life as from a great altitude, as a sort of landscape, and with a deepening sense of the connection of all its parts.”
If that promise of clarity is what awaits us all, then death doesn’t seem so awful, and that is a great gift from Sacks. A fitting, lovely farewell.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-451-49293-7
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
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