Good Women, Bad Guys would be more like it for this latest from best-selling author Hite (Women and Love, 1987, etc.), here writing with Colleran, her assistant. Far from being the ``revolutionary'' guide to choosing a good mate and establishing an egalitarian 90's relationship that the authors promise, it's a whiny, biased kvetch against the male sex in general, written in grade-B women's-mag style. By a conservative estimate, 50-60% of this book consists of excerpts from questionnaires Hite distributed to an unspecified number of women (she never explains the methodology she used to reach such eyebrow-raising conclusions as, ``Most single women over sixty-five like their lives very much''). Hite and Colleran's contributions are limited to pep talks (if you take inventory of your relationship and find it more rewarding than degrading, ``Enjoy!'' they exhort: ``We give you total permission. In fact, we insist!'') and superficial analyses in which ponderous terms like ``emotional violence'' are hefted about but never precisely defined. A man's glancing at a sporting event on TV while his woman is pressing for a discussion of feelings seems to rank right up there with outright mockery and revilement, on the E.V. scale. Overall, men are represented as scapegoats in every intimate failure: ``In the beginning, [a relationship] usually is happy, but as the stereotypes...gradually creep in and the woman tries to fight against them, the situation starts to deteriorate.'' The intelligent woman reader must ask, ``Aren't we beyond all this?'' (Male readers are advised to avoid this book, lest the urge to drop-kick it off a roof be taken as further evidence of their emotional violence.)
Pub Date: June 14, 1991
ISBN: 0-88184-686-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1991
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
Did you like this book?
Noted jazz and pop record producer Thiele offers a chatty autobiography. Aided by record-business colleague Golden, Thiele traces his career from his start as a ``pubescent, novice jazz record producer'' in the 1940s through the '50s, when he headed Coral, Dot, and Roulette Records, and the '60s, when he worked for ABC and ran the famous Impulse! jazz label. At Coral, Thiele championed the work of ``hillbilly'' singer Buddy Holly, although the only sessions he produced with Holly were marred by saccharine strings. The producer specialized in more mainstream popsters like the irrepressibly perky Teresa Brewer (who later became his fourth wife) and the bubble-machine muzak-meister Lawrence Welk. At Dot, Thiele was instrumental in recording Jack Kerouac's famous beat- generation ramblings to jazz accompaniment (recordings that Dot's president found ``pornographic''), while also overseeing a steady stream of pop hits. He then moved to the Mafia-controlled Roulette label, where he observed the ``silk-suited, pinky-ringed'' entourage who frequented the label's offices. Incredibly, however, Thiele remembers the famously hard-nosed Morris Levy, who ran the label and was eventually convicted of extortion, as ``one of the kindest, most warm-hearted, and classiest music men I have ever known.'' At ABC/Impulse!, Thiele oversaw the classic recordings of John Coltrane, although he is the first to admit that Coltrane essentially produced his own sessions. Like many producers of the day, Thiele participated in the ownership of publishing rights to some of the songs he recorded; he makes no apology for this practice, which he calls ``entirely appropriate and without any ethical conflicts.'' A pleasant, if not exactly riveting, memoir that will be of most interest to those with a thirst for cocktail-hour stories of the record biz. (25 halftones, not seen)
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-19-508629-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
Did you like this book?
© Copyright 2021 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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.
