A compelling, frightening look at women, not as victims of violence, but as perpetrators of it. Alarmed by the number of violent women who later claim their behavior was accidental or caused by abuse, Pearson, a crime journalist who has written for Harper's and other magazines, decided to study current notions of female aggression and uncovered some stunning statistics. Family-violence scholars have discovered that severe abuse is committed as frequently by women as by men, and terrible abuse occurs even among lesbian couples. Pearson is particularly disgusted with the FBI tenet that ``there are no female serial killers'' and explores several studies which suggest that when multiple cases of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) occur in one family, it is in fact frequently infanticide perpetrated by the mother. (For a detailed study of this subject, see Richard Firstman and Jamie Talan, The Death of Innocents, p. 1178.) Pearson cites the tragic cases of nurse and caregivers like Jane Toppan and Dorothea Puente, who routinely poisoned their charges. Pearson, an avowed feminist, takes issue with feminist thinkers who rush to defend murderers like Betty Broderick, Jean Harris, and Aileen Wuornos by using the blanket defense of battered-women's syndrome. The syndrome, Pearson holds, is a canard, and she points out that female killers typically say the killing was an attempt at suicide gone awry or, in the case of Wuornos, that she'd been mortally afraid with seven different strangers and was compelled to kill and rob them all. Pearson has the most contempt for Canadian killer Karla Holmolka Bernardo, who with her husband, Paul, tortured and murdered three young women, including her own sister. Karla testified that she had been beaten and forced by Paul to participate; Pearson provides some grisly forensic evidence that indicates Karla killed the girls. Gripping, controversial material that sheds light on violence and society, and how women can get away with murder. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-670-85925-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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