This is a vital, timely issue, and the author’s research is impressively in-depth, but an overabundance of anecdotes and...
An award-winning journalist reports from the front lines of the sexual assault controversy.
Entering the complex, contentious conversation about sexual assault on college campuses, New York Times Magazine and Vanity Fair contributing editor Grigoriadis offers an extensively researched investigation based on dozens of case reports and interviews with 120 students (accusers, accused, and activists) from 20 universities and 80 administrators and experts. What has emerged from her three years of research, though, are more questions than satisfying answers: what constitutes sexual assault? How prevalent is the problem? How should colleges address assault charges? How can assaults be prevented? Types of college assault, she found, occur in four main categories: penetration (“intercourse, oral sex, and fingering”); “incapacitated rape,” meaning “sex that happens when the victim is unconscious”; any aggressive act, such as groping; and “the vast middle ground” of sex without consent. Incapacitated rape, the author reveals, is the most common type, resulting from a culture of heavy drinking at most residential colleges. The most significant risk factors for assault are “free-flowing alcohol and misogyny,” both of which are hallmarks of fraternities. “If you want to maintain your status as a striving middle-to-upper-middle-class member of society,” Grigoriadis asserts, “having been part of the Greek system in college is a sure way to do it.” She paints a dismal picture of college social life, where students feel pressured to hook up, where boys are confused about what constitutes consent, and where girls—often falling-down drunk—acquiesce to sex that they don’t really want. As a society, writes the author, we’re afraid “to tell girls that they too bear responsibility for their sexual behavior and safety.” In an appendix, she offers common-sense advice for students and parents: “watch out for guys who exhibit toxic masculinity”; watch what you drink; “learn a few self-defense tricks”; and carefully read the sexual-misconduct section of the college handbook.
This is a vital, timely issue, and the author’s research is impressively in-depth, but an overabundance of anecdotes and statistics offers little clarity on the issue.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-544-70255-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
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
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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