Essential cultural criticism. But brace yourself—it ain’t pretty.
How the last three decades of movies, music, and media have written the story for women.
In a carefully buttressed and sharply written analysis that takes into account a dizzying number of cultural products and characters, Gilbert tries to understand how we got where we are today, a moment when the undeniable increase in women’s power meets the repeal of Roe v. Wade and the reelection of Donald Trump. If we can see what went wrong, the Atlantic staff writer says, perhaps “we can conceive of a more powerful way forward.” As she considers topics ranging from the Spice Girls to Nora Ephron to Paris and Perez Hilton, from American Pie to Awkward Black Girl, from Sheryl Sandberg to Sheila Heti to Kim Kardashian, she sees that “so much of what I was trying to figure out kept coming back to porn.” Insights of that sort come fast and bright, big and small: “I’ve always wondered why people diminish girlhood as somehow cosseted or twee, when the reality of coming-of-age as a young woman is so raw, filled with emotional violence and literal blood.” “Movies in the aughts [the decade of Shallow Hal and Knocked Up] hated women.” “Why is male honesty in art seen as brave while female honesty is so repellent?” The heroes of her account are sometimes unexpected, Taylor Swift and Instagram among them. Her exploration of torture porn and its connection to Abu Ghraib is not for the fainthearted. (If you’ve never heard of a movie called Hostel, consider yourself lucky.) Truly, Gilbert deserves a medal—not only for her observations and conclusions, but for navigating the sludge she had to wade through to get there.
Essential cultural criticism. But brace yourself—it ain’t pretty.Pub Date: April 29, 2025
ISBN: 9780593656297
Page Count: 330
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
A familiar format, but a timely reminder that cities are made up of individuals, each with their own stories.
Portraits in a post-pandemic world.
After the Covid-19 lockdowns left New York City’s streets empty, many claimed that the city was “gone forever.” It was those words that inspired Stanton, whose previous collections include Humans of New York (2013), Humans of New York: Stories (2015), and Humans (2020), to return to the well once more for a new love letter to the city’s humanity and diversity. Beautifully laid out in hardcover with crisp, bright images, each portrait of a New Yorker is accompanied by sparse but potent quotes from Stanton’s interviews with his subjects. Early in the book, the author sequences three portraits—a couple laughing, then looking serious, then the woman with tears in her eyes—as they recount the arc of their relationship, transforming each emotional beat of their story into an affecting visual narrative. In another, an unhoused man sits on the street, his husky eating out of his hand. The caption: “I’m a late bloomer.” Though the pandemic isn’t mentioned often, Stanton focuses much of the book on optimistic stories of the post-pandemic era. Among the most notable profiles is Myles Smutney, founder of the Free Store Project, whose story of reclaiming boarded‑up buildings during the lockdowns speaks to the city’s resilience. In reusing the same formula from his previous books, the author confirms his thesis: New York isn’t going anywhere. As he writes in his lyrical prologue, “Just as one might dive among coral reefs to marvel at nature, one can come to New York City to marvel at humanity.” The book’s optimism paints New York as a city where diverse lives converge in moments of beauty, joy, and collective hope.
A familiar format, but a timely reminder that cities are made up of individuals, each with their own stories.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781250277589
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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