A meditative, if sometimes-overwritten, appraisal of compulsion and love.
In the absence of love, a man seeks solace in pathological gambling and literature in this debut memoir.
When Rosenthal was just 11 years old, his father attempted suicide and was institutionalized. The author’s socially awkward teenage years were lonely ones, and he turned to literature to experience and understand the romantic love he wanted but could never attain. He entered the University of Iowa’s renowned creative writing program, but failed playwriting, a harbinger of his future disappointment as a writer. He then meandered from one high school teaching job to another, and during a stint on the faculty of American University in Washington, D.C., he discovered the obsession that would dominate his life for the next quarter-century: gambling on horse racing. He accepted a position at Northern Illinois University, mostly due to its proximity to racetracks, and sank himself so deep in debt, he says, that he was reduced to various kinds of financial fraud in order to barely stay afloat. Along the way, Rosenthal suffered both minor indignities (he was caught shoplifting after squandering thousands of dollars in winnings in a single day) and major ones (bankruptcy). Eventually, he sought help from therapists and programs for gambling addicts and found some stability, if not the fullness of redemption. This is an eclectic work that combines self-help, personal memoir, and a philosophical meditation on the nature and possibility of romantic love. Rosenthal’s story is a familiar one, but he tells it with considerable flair and erudition. Unfortunately, his style sometimes devolves into undisciplined flamboyance: “Pugnacious bouncers bum-rush the pathetic imbibers onto the street as reward for emptying their pockets to an old barkeep pissed off at having to listen to the same old racetrack B.S. from whining losers seeking no more than a sympathetic ear for solace.” Also, he sometimes piles up literary references that do little to illustrate his points, and the fact that this brief work is distilled down from 3,000 pages of journal entries makes it a bit scattershot. That said, Rosenthal is bracingly candid about his missteps, and exceedingly thoughtful throughout.
A meditative, if sometimes-overwritten, appraisal of compulsion and love.Pub Date: March 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5049-6683-2
Page Count: 144
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An intriguing study for students of military culture and mental health.
A challenge to conventional wisdom about the military ignoring PTSD, traumatic brain injury, and suicide among troops who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Kieran (History, American Studies/Washington & Jefferson Coll.; Forever Vietnam: How a Divisive War Changed American Public Memory, 2014, etc.) never denies the seriousness of PTSD, TBI, and suicide among active and discharged veterans. However, he contends that critics of the military and federal bureaucracy often downplay the complexities of understanding the problems and finding effective solutions. In fact, he contends, implacable anti-war critics have unfairly used the psychological injuries for political ends. “In a climate in which anti-war sentiment was often dismissed with assertions that critics were not supporting the troops,” writes Kieran, “pointing out how the wars were harming those troops facilitated broader policy critiques.” Before the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, research about PTSD, TBI, and suicide was based on the premise that deployments would be brief and that the same troops would not be ordered to return to the same war zones multiple times. When the nature of war changed, the military and the Veterans Administration had to recalibrate their policies and their research to react to new realities. As the author points out, those recalibrations take time and don’t usually conform to the urgent needs of combat veterans. Kieran’s research takes readers inside the medical arm of military services and civilian government bureaucracies, showing dedicated researchers and administrators trying to reach consensus about how to treat—and perhaps even prevent—serious mental damage and suicide. The author stresses that the disagreements about how to proceed derive from compassionate advocates relying on science-based research. Kieran rejects the commonly held belief that those in charge of warfare are dismissive of effective treatments for veterans. Throughout, the author provides memorable individual case studies. Much of the book, however, relies on dense academic research and a scholarly writing style, so general readers will need to pay close attention to digest the author’s arguments.
An intriguing study for students of military culture and mental health.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4798-9236-5
Page Count: 404
Publisher: New York Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
This concise overview and defense of women's fury and its constructive potential is a rehash of feminist writings of the past two decades. Valentis and Devane (both teach literature at SUNY Albany) begin by documenting the numerous ways female rage has historically been stigmatized (as hysteria, as erotomania, as evil) in art, literature, psychotherapy, and the media—from Ovid and Freud to Snow White's wicked stepmother and Fatal Attraction. Given these images, they say, it is not surprising that women succumb to social pressures to be attractive, pliant, and self-sacrificing or that they sometimes mask socially unsanctioned feelings of anger with smiles, depression, phobias, panic attacks, or passive-aggressive behavior. Nonetheless, female rage is real (best illustrated, the authors say, by the Lorena Bobbitt case and many women's support of her actions) and is now ``loose in the land.'' Their favorite symbol—the ``gatekeeper of the secret realm of female rage''—is Medusa, a once-beautiful maiden who was violated by Poseidon, turned into a hideous beast, and finally slain by Perseus. Recasting Medusa as a symbol of female strength and sexual power, the authors recommend that, instead of repressing or denying their anger, women get in touch with their inner Medusa, utilize their power, and find rational ways to direct their rage. Many of their examples are drawn from interviews describing various personal confrontations (such as discovering a partner's infidelity), and the question of how issues of female rage are or should be handled in professional or political contexts is largely ignored. This omission exemplifies the lightweight tone of the book. Despite some good advice to women on handling rage, this often reads like a collection of articles from glossy women's magazines (a quiz in the appendix is called ``How Enraged Are You?''). A lackluster contribution to the literature of female empowerment. (40 b&w illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 2, 1994
ISBN: 0-517-59584-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
