by Nan Robertson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 1992
Women's struggle for equal work and equal pay at the newspaper of record is the subject of Pulitzer-winning Robertson's lively new book—a century-long tale of courage, despair, and outright mulishness told with wit, candor, and great affection. When Robertson (Getting Better, 1988) came to work at The New York Times in 1955, she was met by a sea of white male faces confidently pounding out all the news that was fit to print—at least from their point of view. For two decades, female reporters at the proudly liberal paper would devote much of their energy to breaking the barrier in the all-male city room, coaxing male reporters at the Washington bureau to lunch with them, and forcing their way onto the tiny balcony of the National Press Club to take notes while male journalists dined below with governmental bigwigs. By the late 1960's, female employees had had enough. A newly formed Women's Caucus met with publisher Arthur Sulzberger to point out the gross disparities in hiring and pay between the sexes. The all- male management responded with hurt feelings and assurances of affirmative action—but nothing happened. In 1974, six female employees filed suit against the paper, resulting in a lengthy process of depositions and a settlement that provided some back pay and the promise of reform. Still, as one Women's Caucus president has pointed out, the company's follow-up apparently has been ``woefully inadequate,'' and despite a narrowing pay gap and diminished sexism, instances of the paper's ingrained sexual bias still seem to crop up. Nevertheless, Robertson's detailed profiles of Times employees, from Pulitzer-winning Anne O'Hare McCormick to Anna Quindlen—many of whom risked their careers for the sake of their beliefs—make this a virtual celebration of feminism, and her fascination with what made the people in power tick enhances her insider's view. Superlative journalism—sharp, detailed, and unsparing. (Eight pages of b&w photos.)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-394-58452-X
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1991
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
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by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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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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