A multilayered illustration of a unique community where things aren’t always what they seem.
An exploration of perhaps the last quiet town in America.
Journalist Kurczy, who hasn’t “owned a cellphone in nearly a decade,” takes us through the intriguing community and culture of Green Bank, West Virginia, dubbed “the quietest town in America.” Nestled “deep in the mountains of Appalachia,” the town is home to the Green Bank Observatory. Due to the demands of the facility’s astronomical research, devices emanating radio frequencies that might interfere with their telescopes are banned in what is called the “National Radio Quiet Zone.” After learning about this seemingly idyllic community, the author dug deeper, hoping to discover a better life. During numerous visits, Kurczy interviewed and heard stories from and about some of its residents who have sought refuge in the silence, including neo-hippies and those suffering from “a mysterious illness called ‘electromagnetic hypersensitivity.’ ” The author also discovered a darker side of this remote area: conspiracy theories, unsolved deaths, and ties to the racist National Alliance. Throughout his time in Green Bank, Kurczy ate with the locals, drank moonshine, shot guns, and participated in cave-dives and other adventures. In a community filled with contradictions, he also found that neighbors were always willing to help each other in times of need. Kurczy also examines educational and health concerns, the impact that the absence of technology has had on the citizens’ lives, other means of communications used within the community, and inaccurate portrayals of the region by the media. The epilogue offers an update based on the effects of the current pandemic. Although Kurczy recognizes that various viewpoints exist within the community and includes them in the text, the narrative also includes some physical and cultural clichés frequently found in works related to rural Americans. Nonetheless, the story remains captivating.
A multilayered illustration of a unique community where things aren’t always what they seem.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-294549-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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