A British journalist and cultural historian pays tribute to, and expands upon, Charles Darwin’s thoughts on emotions.
Specifically, Walton focuses on The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), which postulated that the ways in which human beings communicate the six basic emotions of fear, anger, disgust, sadness, surprise and happiness are innate and universal. Walton (Out of It: A Cultural History of Intoxication, 2002) adds embarrassment, jealousy, contempt and guilt or shame to Darwin’s core emotions and then explores the psychological dynamics of these ten and how they have been evoked in our cultural lives. Each of his chapters opens with a relevant quote—e.g., Montaigne on fear, Benjamin Franklin on contempt, Cervantes on embarrassment—followed by an array of dictionary definitions, and where applicable, Darwin’s list of physical indicators, (spitting, shuddering and dilation of the nostrils, for example, indicate disgust). Walton follows the same pattern in discussing each emotion: First, he tackles the nature of the emotion itself and traces its semantic history; next, he examines the ways in which the emotion can be induced in others; and third, he looks at how it impacts the individual experiencing it. Thus, the chapter on shame, for example, begins with the mythical origins of shame in Genesis, looks at the link between shame and conscience, and examines representations of the shame of nakedness in literature and painting; next is a discussion of the intentional infliction of shame through public humiliation, with references to medieval methods of punishment and Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter; finally, he turns to the desire to bring shame and humiliation upon oneself, a discussion that ranges from the martyrdom of early Christians to Krafft-Ebbing’s work on masochism. Lest this sound unnervingly academic, Walton frequently draws on pop culture, citing the movies of Woody Allen, British sitcoms and Hollywood gossip columnists to make his points.
Not a deep analysis, but a fresh and entertaining survey.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2005
ISBN: 0-8021-1804-6
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2005
Categories: GENERAL HISTORY
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Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY
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Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORICAL & MILITARY | UNITED STATES | HISTORY
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