This is an important and compelling book that calls for a feminist reordering of our society: it may make women shudder, but...
The feminist book par excellence, by one of the Movement's leading theoreticians, about the crime only males can commit--rape.
From a feudal lord's "first night" privileges with his female serfs to a Southern plantation owner's easy access to his slaves, from ancient Troy to Vietnamese hamlets, everywhere soldiers have marched into conquered lands, the strong and the rich have systematically oppressed the weak and the poor, preferably (but not always) those of other races, creeds or nationalities, usually women, but also slightly built young men in prisons. Brownmiller shows how rape has its genesis in power (and the need to preserve the appearance of power) rather than eroticism. It is as much a function of the strange byways of male dominance and bonding as it is an expression of contempt for the female victim: early Babylonian law was concerned with the loss of the bride price associated with the marriage of an "unspoiled" virgin; rape was avenged not by punishing the rapist, but by violating his wife in turn. And on up through the present, where the author demolishes many of the convenient male myths concerning the crime by using law enforcement statistics from a variety of locales. Once and for all she lays to rest the claims that rape charges are unfounded (two percent of the time, the same as for other felonies), that women "precipitate" rape by provocative behavior (less often than any other major crime), that rape victims are often prostitutes deprived of a fee (one percent of the time), that resistance increases the chance of physical harm (it doesn't), that rapists are shy, lonely men with inadequate sex lives (they're violence-prone criminals, usually with a record, who rape in groups nearly half of the time).
This is an important and compelling book that calls for a feminist reordering of our society: it may make women shudder, but it will also make them think--and possibly rage.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1975
ISBN: 9780449908204
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1975
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
For fans only.
The hoodie-and-shorts-clad Pennsylvania senator blends the political and personal, and often not nicely.
Fetterman’s memoir addresses three major themes. The first—and the one he leads with—is depression and mental illness, which, combined with a stroke and heart trouble, brought him to a standstill and led him to contemplate suicide. The second is his rise to national-level politics from a Rust Belt town; as he writes, he’s carved a path as a contentious player with a populist streak and a dislike for elites. There are affecting moments in his personal reminiscences, especially when he writes of the lives of his working-class neighbors in impoverished southwestern Pennsylvania, its once-prosperous Monongahela River Valley “the most heartbreaking drive in the United States.” It’s the third element that’s problematic, and that’s his in-the-trenches account of daily politics. One frequent complaint is the media, as when he writes of one incident, “I am not the first public figure to get fucked by a reporter, and I won’t be the last. What was eye-opening was the window it gave into how people with disabilities navigate a world that doesn’t give a shit.” He reserves special disdain for his Senate race opponent Mehmet Oz, about whom he wonders, “If I had run against any other candidate…would I have lost? He got beaten by a guy recovering from a stroke.” Perhaps so, and Democratic stalwarts will likely be dismayed at his apparent warmish feelings for Donald Trump and dislike of his own party’s “performative protests.” If Fetterman’s book convinces a troubled soul to seek help, it will have done some good, but it’s hard to imagine that it will make much of an impression in the self-help literature. One wonders, meanwhile, at sentiments such as this: “If men are forced to choose between picking their party or keeping their balls, most men are going to choose their balls.”
For fans only.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9780593799826
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
