by Will Storr ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 23, 2022
An interesting, deeply researched, and sometimes disturbing look into the science of what makes us tick.
Forget about doing away with inequality, writes science journalist Storr—not while humans are humans and leopards don’t change their spots.
What keeps striving humans up at night? Not wealth, sexual conquest, or security: No, writes Storr; it’s status, the relative position we hold vis-à-vis those around us. The quest for high status deforms our better angels. “Always on alert for slights and praise,” he writes, “we can be petty, hateful, aggressive, grandiose and delusional.” In fact, “status is a fundamental human need.” It’s not just that we need to be admired; we must be admired more than the person next to us, and we’re hard-wired for that golden key: Holding status affords access to wealth, sex, security, and every other thing that we desire. Digging into anthropology, psychology, neuroscience, and other realms, Storr outlines the evolutionary history of our need as social animals to belong to a group—and, once inside a group, to attain rank. Sometimes this plays out in odd ways. One of the many layered examples the author presents is the case of a Micronesian island community in which status is attained by the farmer who could grow the largest yam to present to the village leader, resulting in a society of secretive, jealous, mistrustful Mendelians and plenty of disharmony. Those who do not attain status through yams or heroics—or are shunned or ridiculed—can do very bad things. Storr locates status loss as an ingredient in the makings of serial killers, the Unabomber, and other miscreants. “Humiliation can be seen as the opposite of status, the hell to its heaven,” he writes. “Like status, humiliation comes from other people.” When other people engineer that status loss, mayhem can ensue, especially today’s “neoliberal game,” which relies on a zero-sum formula of have and have-not. Pair this eye-opening book with W. David Marx’s equally revelatory Status and Culture.
An interesting, deeply researched, and sometimes disturbing look into the science of what makes us tick.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-00-835467-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Harper360
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
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by Bob Woodward ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 15, 2024
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
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by Ta-Nehisi Coates ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2024
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
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