A disturbing and highly illuminating analysis.
Covington discusses the lives of female prisoners and the quiet ways in which they help one another survive the trauma of incarceration.
The author, an internationally recognized clinical social worker, psychologist, and specialist in the fields of addiction and trauma treatment, works as a consultant and advocate for reform in the prison system’s management of female inmates. In 1987, she arranged to have herself imprisoned in North Carolina’s Black Mountain facility for three days: “I was there,” she writes, “to confront the pervasive silence, the cultural void, which keeps most of us from knowing how incarcerated women lived.” She interviewed numerous former prisoners for this volume; the women’s personal tales expose the demeaning cruelty of the criminal system. (“The prison system is brutal and dehumanizing, and the ways women take care of each other while enduring it are through practical, material, and deliberate actions taken every day.”) In Covington’s telling, even providing a basic gesture of compassion toward an emotionally distressed inmate—such as by hugging a woman who’s just learned that her father has died—brings great personal risk, since hugs are not permitted by the prison system. The traumatic experiences that led many of these women to run afoul of the law, the author argues, are compounded by the trauma of incarceration. Divided into four sections (“Entering the System,” “Living Inside,” “The Journey Home,” and “What We Can Do”), this comprehensive exploration of the criminal justice system as it applies to women compellingly combines facts and figures with poignant and distressing firsthand narratives. The book is chock-full of fascinating, if often infuriating, factoids—if you’ve ever wondered why a prison would release a woman just after midnight and leave her at a bus stop when they know the next bus is not expected for five hours, the answer is that they get paid for the day without having to provide any food or service. Despite some repetition in the text, this book is a valuable reference tool for those advocating for prison reform.
A disturbing and highly illuminating analysis.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9781394254392
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Wiley
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A sharp, entertaining view of the news media from one of its star players.
The veteran newscaster reflects on her triumphs and hardships, both professional and private.
In this eagerly anticipated memoir, Couric (b. 1957) transforms the events of her long, illustrious career into an immensely readable story—a legacy-preserving exercise, for sure, yet judiciously polished and insightful, several notches above the fray of typical celebrity memoirs. The narrative unfolds through a series of lean chapters as she recounts the many career ascendency steps that led to her massively successful run on the Today Show and comparably disappointing stints as CBS Evening News anchor, talk show host, and Yahoo’s Global News Anchor. On the personal front, the author is candid in her recollections about her midlife adventures in the dating scene and deeply sorrowful and affecting regarding the experience of losing her husband to colon cancer as well as the deaths of other beloved family members, including her sister and parents. Throughout, Couric maintains a sharp yet cool-headed perspective on the broadcast news industry and its many outsized personalities and even how her celebrated role has diminished in recent years. “It’s AN ADJUSTMENT when the white-hot spotlight moves on,” she writes. “The ego gratification of being the It girl is intoxicating (toxic being the root of the word). When that starts to fade, it takes some getting used to—at least it did for me.” Readers who can recall when network news coverage and morning shows were not only relevant, but powerfully influential forces will be particularly drawn to Couric’s insights as she tracks how the media has evolved over recent decades and reflects on the negative effects of the increasing shift away from reliable sources of informed news coverage. The author also discusses recent important cultural and social revolutions, casting light on issues of race and sexual orientation, sexism, and the predatory behavior that led to the #MeToo movement. In that vein, she expresses her disillusionment with former co-host and friend Matt Lauer.
A sharp, entertaining view of the news media from one of its star players.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-316-53586-1
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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