by Tori Amos ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 5, 2020
A profound autobiographical playlist and radically political call to action primarily for Amos fans.
Awards & Accolades
New York Times Bestseller
Rolling Stone & Kirkus' Best Music Books of 2020
The inimitable musician memorializes her artistic journey through music and activism.
With great conviction, Amos believes “we are all confronting dark forces that aim to divide us as a world, as countries, as people, as artists, as creators.” This book is rooted in motivated political resistance and the preservation of artistic expressionism. As a 40-year veteran of the music industry, the author acknowledges pivotal moments throughout her career and lets her song lyrics shine at the beginning of each chapter. Amos begins with “Gold Dust,” reflecting back on her teenage self and the creative impulses that guided her as a young artist and a rising social and human rights activist. The author discusses how the “weight of processing conflict” fueled the writing of her hit “Little Earthquakes” and how the 2017 song “Bang” was intended to energize advocates of true democracy after Donald Trump’s Muslim ban. Never one to shy away from the controversial, complex, or incendiary, Amos expresses past and present frustrations with record label melodrama and the importance of continuing conversations about sexual abuse, female genital mutilation, government oppression, and attacks on LGBTQ rights worldwide. A section on 9/11 comes into vivid focus when Amos describes an eerie walk through a muted Manhattan as “the drums of war had begun beating." She continues, “as I write these words all these years later, we are still at war—in that very same war.” In addition to her politically charged thoughts, the author reflects poignantly on the end-of-life care and eventual loss of her mother, which occurred while she was writing this book. The concluding chapters address her grief and how she has been processing this absence by manifesting her beloved mother’s influence through prose and music. Though the narrative structure is haphazard, the result, nevertheless, is a dramatically inspired volume of lyrics and legacy presenting Amos as an artist, an activist, and a sharp, thoughtful musician with a commanding voice. One of Kirkus and Rolling Stone’s Best Music Books of 2020.
A profound autobiographical playlist and radically political call to action primarily for Amos fans.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-0415-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
by Emmanuel Carrère translated by Linda Coverdale ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 13, 2011
The book begins in Sri Lanka with the tsunami of 2004—a horror the author saw firsthand, and the aftermath of which he...
The latest from French writer/filmmaker Carrère (My Life as a Russian Novel, 2010, etc.) is an awkward but intermittently touching hybrid of novel and autobiography.
The book begins in Sri Lanka with the tsunami of 2004—a horror the author saw firsthand, and the aftermath of which he describes powerfully. Carrère and his partner, Hélène, then return to Paris—and do so with a mutual devotion that's been renewed and deepened by all they've witnessed. Back in France, Hélène's sister Juliette, a magistrate and mother of three small daughters, has suffered a recurrence of the cancer that crippled her in adolescence. After her death, Carrère decides to write an oblique tribute and an investigation into the ravages of grief. He focuses first on Juliette's colleague and intimate friend Étienne, himself an amputee and survivor of childhood cancer, and a man in whose talkativeness and strength Carrère sees parallels to himself ("He liked to talk about himself. It's my way, he said, of talking to and about others, and he remarked astutely that it was my way, too”). Étienne is a perceptive, dignified person and a loyal, loving friend, and Carrère's portrait of him—including an unexpectedly fascinating foray into Étienne and Juliette's chief professional accomplishment, which was to tap the new European courts for help in overturning longtime French precedents that advantaged credit-card companies over small borrowers—is impressive. Less successful is Carrère's account of Juliette's widower, Patrice, an unworldly cartoonist whom he admires for his fortitude but seems to consider something of a simpleton. Now and again, especially in the Étienne sections, Carrère's meditations pay off in fresh, pungent insights, and his account of Juliette's last days and of the aftermath (especially for her daughters) is quietly harrowing.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9261-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
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BOOK REVIEW
by Emmanuel Carrère ; translated by John Lambert
BOOK REVIEW
by Emmanuel Carrère ; translated by John Lambert
BOOK REVIEW
by Emmanuel Carrère ; translated by John Lambert
by Bari Weiss ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 10, 2019
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
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