by Victoria Vantoch ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2013
At a time when women weren’t supposed to want to travel beyond their fenced yards, stewardesses set their sights on the sky;...
A historian chronicles the stewardess’ trajectory from friendly nurse to sultry sex symbol during the “golden age” of flying, 1945–1970.
In our era of flight delays, overcrowded planes and pretzel packets, it’s easy to forget that air travel once held the promise of allure and sophistication, and that the attendants who staffed the aisles acted as role models for women who craved more than just suburban domesticity. Using archival materials and interviews with former stewardesses, Vantoch (The Threesome Handbook, 2007) demonstrates that these women strived to literally soar beyond the confines of the roles allotted to them in midcentury America. Aside from a brief, giddy phase in the 1920s when “lady pilots” performed at air shows, aviation was a man’s world—until airlines began promoting in-flight service as a way to woo travelers away from automobiles and trains. Who better to assist first-time fliers and businessmen than docile young women with medical training? With the 1940s came improvements to the airplanes (pressurized cabins, more headroom), resulting in less turbulence, and airlines dropped the nursing requirement for prospective stewardesses. By this time, the stewardess as icon embodied a dichotomy dear to the heart of Cold War–era Americans: the plucky, attractive woman who lived to serve even as she professed independence. Vantoch’s research illuminates the strict rules that airlines imposed to keep stewardesses in line, monitoring their weight, inspecting their hair and makeup, and insisting that they retire upon marriage, pregnancy or the age of 32. The revolutionary spirit of the 1960s, however, led many stewardesses to protest these increasingly irrelevant rules, as well as to challenge racial stereotyping in hiring policies and to rebel against sexualized ad campaigns.
At a time when women weren’t supposed to want to travel beyond their fenced yards, stewardesses set their sights on the sky; this book lovingly salutes them.Pub Date: April 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8122-4481-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Univ. of Pennsylvania
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2013
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by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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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
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by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019
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
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