A dispiriting situation, one that will bring only more misery, Brown and Abel foretell, before all the gun-distribution...
How efforts to curb America’s “Great Gun Bazaar” have foundered on the lobbying shoals of the National Rifle Association and kindred gun-rights organizations.
Since legislators can’t confront the issue of handgun proliferation and misuse—bills never even get out of committee—couldn’t litigation do the job? Abel’s law firm, Wendell Gauthier, tried to demand culpability on the part of weapon makers as it did successfully with the tobacco industry. Their suit seemed modest, requiring waiting periods, limiting to one the number of guns that could be bought within a 30-day period, advocating the development of smart guns that could be used only by their owner. Forget it. When the NRA gets rolling, explain Abel and investigative journalist Brown, they wield outsized political clout for their three million members: dealing with largesse, playing hard on the sacredness of individual rights, convincing the courts that gun control is a legislative issue. The authors detail the schism that almost allowed some control to emerge: The NRA is a consumerist organization that thrives on crisis and perceived threats to rights, while the gun makers are businesspeople who want to be left alone. Smith & Wesson, hoping to be exempted from lawsuits, agreed to a “Code of Conduct” and were instantly pilloried by the NRA, boycotted, and left holding a very lonely, wind-blown position. Throughout, Brown and Abel stipple their legal and political tale with recountings of horrific killings, including the deaths of youngsters and plenty of hate murders—recurring phenomena that should be more than enough to stack the scales of justice on the side of some form of gun control. Still, only eight weeks after the Columbine shootings, the NRA had thwarted any gun-control legislation that might have come out of Congress. Wendell Gauthier hasn’t fared any better.
A dispiriting situation, one that will bring only more misery, Brown and Abel foretell, before all the gun-distribution loopholes are closed.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2003
ISBN: 0-7432-1561-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2002
An intriguing approach to identifying and relating to one’s emotions.
An analysis of our emotions and the skills required to understand them.
We all have emotions, but how many of us have the vocabulary to accurately describe our experiences or to understand how our emotions affect the way we act? In this guide to help readers with their emotions, Brackett, the founding director of Yale University’s Center for Emotional Intelligence, presents a five-step method he calls R.U.L.E.R.: We need to recognize our emotions, understand what has caused them, be able to label them with precise terms and descriptions, know how to safely and effectively express them, and be able to regulate them in productive ways. The author walks readers through each step and provides an intriguing tool to use to help identify a specific emotion. Brackett introduces a four-square grid called a Mood Meter, which allows one to define where an emotion falls based on pleasantness and energy. He also uses four colors for each quadrant: yellow for high pleasantness and high energy, red for low pleasantness and high energy, green for high pleasantness and low energy, and blue for low pleasantness and low energy. The idea is to identify where an emotion lies in this grid in order to put the R.U.L.E.R. method to good use. The author’s research is wide-ranging, and his interweaving of his personal story with the data helps make the book less academic and more accessible to general readers. It’s particularly useful for parents and teachers who want to help children learn to handle difficult emotions so that they can thrive rather than be overwhelmed by them. The author’s system will also find use in the workplace. “Emotions are the most powerful force inside the workplace—as they are in every human endeavor,” writes Brackett. “They influence everything from leadership effectiveness to building and maintaining complex relationships, from innovation to customer relations.”
An intriguing approach to identifying and relating to one’s emotions.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-21284-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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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