Satisfying food for thought on the ever changing dynamics of men and women as they interact and go about their individual...
Examination of the new roles women and men are playing in the home and the workplace.
When Esquire columnist Marche's wife was offered a job in Toronto, it meant the author (The Hunger of the Wolf, 2016, etc.) would be leaving New York City, good friends, and a teaching job so she could take this important position. It was not an easy decision, but the family decided to move. Marche continued his writing career, albeit a different one than before, while taking on the role of househusband and caretaker for their young son. The author intertwines various personal threads—the births of his children, the death of his father, the importance of his grandfather's watch, the complexity of being a father and husband—with larger issues that confound men as they watch women advance in the workplace and recede, to a certain extent, from the home. Marche addresses sexuality, sexual orientation, and the advances gays and transgender people have made in society; the prolific increase of pornography on the internet and how this is linked to a rise in violence against women; how to let children be themselves while inserting a certain amount of control and conformity; and the slog of necessary chores that falls under the heading of housework. The status of men at work and at home is definitely in flux, and Marche effectively pinpoints the most prominent areas, most of which are familiar to women, who have been struggling to assert themselves for decades. Throughout the book, the author includes footnote comments by his wife, which add a lighter air to the narrative and give it a better sense of balance. The definitions of masculinity and manliness are changing, and Marche's commentaries will help readers understand how.
Satisfying food for thought on the ever changing dynamics of men and women as they interact and go about their individual lives.Pub Date: March 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4767-8015-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2017
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
PERSPECTIVES
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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