A shrewd take on cultural history.
Toy mania.
Journalist Hitt makes a lively book debut with a dive into the creation, marketing, and meaning of the iconic Barbie doll, Mattel’s huge moneymaker, launched in 1959. Finding the toy world to be “like the Pentagon,” “highly secretive, obsessed with the threat of espionage and the potential theft of secrets,” Hitt has mined archives and published sources to unravel the mystery of Barbie’s origins, the company’s internal machinations, and its battles against competitors. Barbie, she reveals, was based on a German newspaper cartoon figure called Lilli, who became fashioned into a plaything by a German toy maker. Lilli the figurine debuted in 1955, looking “like a plastic Marlene Dietrich—impossibly thin, synthetically perky, eyebrows angled over a sidelong gaze, already bored by her beholder.” Barbie’s American creator, the feisty Ruth Handler, bought several Lilli dolls on a European trip in 1956, probably having seen one first in a posh toy store on Rodeo Drive, a short distance from her Los Angeles home. Although toy mogul Louis Marx got an exclusive contract to sell Lilli in the U.S., Mattel prevailed after a lawsuit that went on for two years. From the first, the company understood Barbie not as “a terminal product that ends with the first sale, but something to collect, nurture, and feed with a constant supply of costumes and accessories.” Hitt follows Barbie’s fortunes decade by decade, as Mattel strived to change with the times: offering diverse dolls in the 1980s, a President Barbie in 1992, and a roster of niche Barbies later. At the same time, the company mounted relentless infringement suits. By 2023, though, when Greta Gerwig’s movie satirized its clueless male leadership, Mattel finally realized that parody could be a boon for its brand.
A shrewd take on cultural history.Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781668031827
Page Count: 352
Publisher: One Signal/Atria
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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