Friday (Women on Top, 1991, etc.) describes women's self-image from infancy through old age, with lots of tiresome editorializing about the state of the women's movement today. Friday's defense of men against the tyranny of feminism may cause some controversy, but the interest in this disorganized ramble is the clutter of anecdotes, gossip, sex education, and digression, like toiletries piled on the vanity table of a woman who has spent several decades dressing up to face the world. How ``we women'' feel about ourselves and our beauty, Friday theorizes, begins in the nursery with the ``Giantess'' (a.k.a. mother). ``Woman born of woman is not a good teacher, especially in that area where she has been taught to deodorize, to treat as an offensive necessity.'' Since most women spend a lifetime hating the way they look, Friday advocates bringing fathers into the child- rearing process. It would be especially good, says Friday, if fathers were in charge of toilet training, because men do not hate their genitals the way ``antisex'' mothers do. Unlike Matriarchal Feminists and Victim Feminists, who blame their problems on ``Bad Men'' and disparage the attainment of power through beauty, Friday encourages women to compete with all the ammunition at their command, as Gloria Steinum supposedly has. Men, from John Kenneth Galbraith to Mort Zuckerman, ``as well as women would . . . assist Steinem for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was and is that she is lovely to look at.'' Writing of her girlhood in the Charleston of the 1940s and '50s, Friday's mother and sister, she remembers, drank gin to get them through the pains of menstruation. So, on the first day of her first period, Friday imitated her role models and broke through a neighbor's window to get to the gin bottle. Friday keeps hammering home her message, but peeking through the psychobabble and harangue is a tantalizing memoir. ($175,000 ad/promo; author tour; radio satellite tour)
Pub Date: June 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-06-017140-5
Page Count: 589
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
No one’s mind will be changed by Karl’s book, but it’s a valuable report from the scene of an ongoing train wreck.
The chief White House and Washington correspondent for ABC provides a ringside seat to a disaster-ridden Oval Office.
It is Karl to whom we owe the current popularity of a learned Latin term. Questioning chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, he followed up a perhaps inadvertently honest response on the matter of Ukrainian intervention in the electoral campaign by saying, “What you just described is a quid pro quo.” Mulvaney’s reply: “Get over it.” Karl, who has been covering Trump for decades and knows which buttons to push and which to avoid, is not inclined to get over it: He rightly points out that a reporter today “faces a president who seems to have no appreciation or understanding of the First Amendment and the role of a free press in American democracy.” Yet even against a bellicose, untruthful leader, he adds, the press “is not the opposition party.” The author, who keeps his eye on the subject and not in the mirror, writes of Trump’s ability to stage situations, as when he once called Trump out, at an event, for misrepresenting poll results and Trump waited until the camera was off before exploding, “Fucking nasty guy!”—then finished up the interview as if nothing had happened. Trump and his inner circle are also, by Karl’s account, masters of timing, matching negative news such as the revelation that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election with distractions away from Trump—in this case, by pushing hard on the WikiLeaks emails from the Democratic campaign, news of which arrived at the same time. That isn’t to say that they manage people or the nation well; one of the more damning stories in a book full of them concerns former Homeland Security head Kirstjen Nielsen, cut off at the knees even while trying to do Trump’s bidding.
No one’s mind will be changed by Karl’s book, but it’s a valuable report from the scene of an ongoing train wreck.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4562-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
IN THE NEWS
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
