A thoughtful and intuitive book that is not just for parents.
A freelance journalist and parent navigates the murky waters of raising children in a fat-biased society.
As her daughters grew up, Sole-Smith, author of The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image, and Guilt in America, began to notice how often others commented on their bodies, and she understandably worried about the consequences of such superficialities. “Unlearning [a] core belief about the importance of thinness,” writes the author, “means deciding that thin bodies and fat bodies have equal value….You have to believe that being fat isn’t a bad thing. And that means you have to challenge a lot of what you thought you knew about health, beauty, and morality.” Beginning with her personal reflections, the author expands her narrative into a broader sociological exploration, which includes the details from her interviews with families (all struggling with body image and food) and pertinent data and analysis. Sole-Smith is an accessible, concise writer, largely avoiding academic jargon. Even though she explains that everyone has some measure of an ingrained bias, she refrains from making readers feel guilty; rather, she is instructive and encouraging. While digesting hard-hitting comments from children grappling with diet culture, many readers will be able to recognize themselves in similar situations. Sole-Smith provides well-rounded discussions of eating disorders, puberty, calorie counting, fitness influencers, and the myth that a fat child necessarily means that they have lazy or disengaged parents. The author also deconstructs racism and classism endemic to her topic, tracing the historical roots of a variety of prejudices. After highlighting the data and recounting her personal story, Sole-Smith closes with a section entitled “How To Have the Fat Talk,” and she adds a list of further resources notable for the way in which the author divides up relevant books into such categories as memoir, fiction, books on eating, and books on fatness, bodies, and bias.
A thoughtful and intuitive book that is not just for parents.Pub Date: April 25, 2023
ISBN: 9781250831217
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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
PERSPECTIVES
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