Besides making for absorbing reading, these essays pack a feminist wallop.
A vigorous selection of essays spanning the magazine’s modern era that underscore the combative resilience of notable accomplished women who never gave in to what was expected of them.
Perusing the list of subjects—including, among many others, Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Tiny Fey, Whoopi Goldberg, Frida Kahlo, Michelle Phillips, Princess Diana, Tina Turner, and Lady Gaga—it’s clear that a major theme of the collection is overcoming adversity. The profiles are divided into “Comedians,” “White House,” “Society and Style,” “Renegades,” “Musicians,” “the House of Windsor,” “The Stars,” and “In Their Own Words,” and the content spans the last four decades of editors-in-chief, including Tina Brown, Graydon Carter, and Jones, the current EIC. Yes, the pieces engagingly capture the celebrity of many of the subjects, but they are also culturally relevant and timely—e.g., “The Change Agent,” about actor Michelle Williams, who forced a reckoning over the wide discrepancy in pay between men and women in Hollywood. Written as minibiographies, the profiles serve as poignant tales of how one rises and falls and then rises again. In “Deconstructing Gloria” (1992), Leslie Bennetts examines how Gloria Steinem caused a major scandal by dating real estate mogul Mort Zuckerman, as if she were betraying all her feminist ideals: “Trashing her became the favorite spectator sport of the smart set.” In Maureen Orth’s piece on Tina Turner, the singer recounts candidly how she was abused physically and emotionally by Ike Turner for decades; though many witnessed the mistreatment, “no one ever intervened.” Along with bubbly profiles of style icons Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly, Laura Jacobs offers an astute piece on Emily Post, who turned a soured marriage and scandalous divorce into a satisfying new career as a bestselling writer. Finally, there are a cluster of recent essays delineating the fallout of the #MeToo movement by those closest to the subject in film, literature, and Wall Street.
Besides making for absorbing reading, these essays pack a feminist wallop.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-56214-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
Alford's fascinating unraveling of an Army cover-up reveals many American WW II soldiers to be not the great liberators, but the great looters of Europe. At the end of WW II, more than one fifth of the world's great artworks were left under the protection of American soldiers in Germany and Austria. Treasures moved from museums and private homes, either stolen by or hidden from the Nazis, were amassed in warehouses, monasteries, and castles to be safeguarded, then returned to their rightful owners. After a decade-plus of research, (and despite mysteriously missing documents and Army noncooperation), Alford found that, with the enemy defeated, some American soldiers behaved like ravenous children in an untended sweet shop, taking advantage of postwar mayhem to profit. Not content to go home with mere honor, many stole Old Master paintings, ancient coins, china, jewelry, furs, antique pistols, even concentration camp victims' ashes and wedding rings. Alford's prose is textbook-dry, but the lootings at the book's heart are pure action thriller. Captain Norman T. Byrne, appointed to protect works of art in a defeated, bombed-out Berlin, instead presided over the dispersal of valuables from a DÅrer etched plate to a stamp collection. With secret Swiss sales, buried booty, and polygraph interrogations, the Hesse crown jewel theft involving a WAC captain and her colonel lover reads more like LeCarrÇ than history. Even when alerted to wrongdoing, Army higher-ups did little to stop the thieving—either to avoid embarrassment or to cover their own misdeeds. Despite the efforts of Alford, who is now advising German and Russian authorities on recovering looted treasures, the whereabouts of many treasures remains a mystery. While victory and spoils historically go hand in hand, our perception of American Army heroes bringing goodwill and safety in the Nazis' wake is altered by this testament to the dishonesty and greed of a few no-good men.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 1-55972-237-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Birch Lane Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
An intelligent and often witty collection of essays for pre-Baby Boomers and Boomers alike. Clausen (English/Penn State; The Moral Imagination, not reviewed) offers nine essays reflecting on the experiences of the '60s generation. In so doing, he attempts to explode some of the most cherished myths about that turbulent decade and the people it spawned. While members of his generation may have nothing more in common than do those of any other age cluster, Clausen notes that it was nevertheless shaped by political, economic, and historical forces very different from those at work when his father came of age. The title piece is a reflection on what President Kennedy meant to him and his peers. Clausen accurately depicts the ambiguity of JFK's record on issues such as Vietnam, Berlin, and civil rights, but he points out that for those who grew up in the early '60s, the idealistic promises of Camelot still grip the imagination. In ``A Decent Impersonality,'' he ruminates on the increase of informality and the use of first names for even casual acquaintances, arguing that it breeds disrespect for the person and the law. ``Reading the Supermarket Tabloids'' is a dead-on account of this growing phenomenon. In ``Dr. Smiles and Mrs. Beeton,'' Clausen reflects on manners, Victorian England, and the rise of the middle class. ``Jack-in-the-Pulpit'' considers changing tastes in vacation spots and activities. All the pieces are broadly autobiographical—some, such as ``Survivors,'' directly, and others only allusively. ``Grandfathers'' and ``Dialogues with the Dead'' are among the many dealing with changing, but still important, notions of family. Clausen's glib style may not be for everyone, and he often comes off, probably unintentionally, as a tad reactionary. But there's enough here to appeal to readers from a broad spectrum.
Pub Date: Oct. 31, 1994
ISBN: 0-87745-472-8
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Univ. of Iowa
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
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