An inspirational collection of advice offering practical strategies for coping with spousal abandonment.
A comprehensive resource to support women who have been abruptly left by their husbands.
Stark introduces readers to the term “Wife Abandonment Syndrome” (used to describe a situation in which a seemingly loving husband leaves his wife—usually for another woman—and immediately shows signs of anger and aggression) and shares her own experience with the phenomenon. She uses that personal knowledge, as well as information culled from over 400 interviews, to construct a guide to both the “whys” (why are some men compelled to act this way?) and the “hows” (how does one move on with one’s life after such a betrayal?) of WAS. The topics progress in a linear fashion, from the initial abandonment and typical hallmarks of WAS (“systematically devaluing his wife and the marriage, the husband denies what he had previously described as positive aspects of the couple’s joint history”) to possible reasons for such behavior (such as boosting the ego or reacting to a midlife crisis) to healing and rediscovering the joy of one’s own company. The author’s advice and anecdotes are complemented by intriguing statistics, like the fact that 44% of women surveyed were deserted between November and January. Stark’s voice is inherently warm and encouraging as she walks readers through all of the various emotions they might be feeling. She coins useful terminology (relating the eight stages of recovery to nature phenomena, for example) to help illuminate various concepts. While there is one section that feels a bit mean-spirited, in which women describing their exes’ affair partners make remarks like “she’s a crazy lady” and “she’s downright ugly,” the overall tone of the book is overwhelmingly positive and supportive. The author also tackles the effect that WAS can have on kids, including a section on the different types of dads that ex-husbands might become (like a “Windowseat Dad” or a “Disneyland Dad”). The result is a comforting rallying cry for WAS survivors to reclaim their lives and happiness in the wake of a traumatic life change.
An inspirational collection of advice offering practical strategies for coping with spousal abandonment.Pub Date: July 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781988498010
Page Count: 214
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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