A solid debut book providing intriguing insights into the current state of China’s sociocultural system.
A revealing look at some of the women who are changing the way China operates.
For thousands of years, the woman’s role in China was to marry young and produce and raise offspring. In today’s China, that tradition remains deeply embedded, so much so that women find themselves torn between two aspects of their culture: they want to honor their heritage and please their parents by marrying and giving them grandchildren while also seeking a higher education, a well-paying job, and, ultimately, independence. Using numerous interviews and solid research, Economist Cuba correspondent Lake, who used to be based in Beijing, provides a timely, behind-the-scenes look at several women who are currently straddling the marriage/nonmarriage line, women who have reached their 30s and are therefore “leftover”—i.e., beyond a suitable age for marriage and childbearing. The author studies the role of mistresses in Chinese culture and the way foreigners and foreign educations have both helped and hindered Chinese women. She also examines the extreme effect the one-child policy had on the country; during a 30-plus–year period, millions of female fetuses were aborted, leaving fewer women available for possible marriage. Furthermore, one-child girls were pushed to succeed as if they were sons, a situation that has created tension when these women do succeed. Throughout the narrative, the author explores themes of marriage and traditions and the challenges these new, educated, sophisticated Chinese women face as they search for possible mates at work, on dating sites, and through blind dates arranged by their parents. Lake expertly explains how many Chinese men don’t want wives who are well-educated and high-achieving, making it even more difficult for successful women to find life partners.
A solid debut book providing intriguing insights into the current state of China’s sociocultural system.Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-393-25463-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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