Sparkling history of an artistically spirited age.
Fun, fascinating examination of the moment when American and British culture seemed to lose all inhibitions.
In the middle of the 20th century, the walls of censorship were battered by courtroom decisions favoring what officials had called “indecent” literature—e.g., James Joyce’s Ulysses, Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer and Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. Variety senior editor Hofler (Party Animals: A Hollywood Tale of Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll Starring the Fabulous Allan Carr, 2010, etc.) focuses on the period from 1966 to 1973, when those walls seemed to come tumbling down, not only in books, but also in film, theater and TV. Suddenly, authors, directors and producers set their sights quite frankly (albeit often satirically) on formerly taboo subjects like transsexualism (Gore Vidal’s Myra Breckinridge), masturbation (Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint), male prostitution (Midnight Cowboy) and rape (Straw Dogs). Language and subject matter became more explicit in works like the 1966 film of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and the smash-hit TV series All in the Family. Actors of both sexes began appearing fully nude on the popular stage in Hair and Oh! Calcutta! and in films like Andy Warhol’s Trash and Ken Russell’s Women in Love. Hofler’s deep research reveals the personal (and personnel) connections among many of these projects. Most astonishing, however, are the author’s chronicles of the reactionary attitudes these revolutionary works provoked in mainstream media. Readers will marvel over the ideological distance traveled since those years, particularly by the New York Times, which in 1964 fretted about “overt homosexuality” in Greenwich Village and in whose Sunday magazine in 1973 feminist Anne Roiphe clucked her tongue over “evil flower” Lance Loud, the oldest and openly gay scion of the pioneering reality show An American Family.
Sparkling history of an artistically spirited age.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-208834-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: It Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
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