A work of candor that incites more questions than illuminates answers or a path forward.
Bravo unpacks “our complicity” by assigning responsibility for women’s mistreatment at the hands of men to internalized patriarchal norms.
In 2017, the author accused Charlie Rose of sexual misconduct toward her a decade earlier. In the introduction, she examines how “women are conditioned to enable their own mistreatment.” From various angles, she attacks the blaming of victims, heteronormative gender roles, and the forcing of women, in the interest of self-preservation, to choose “the least shitty of shit options.” Bravo weaves stories of women’s interactions with predatory men with social psychology studies about unconscious acceptance of power biases, and she quotes a wide variety of other sources, ranging from bell hooks to Louis C.K. “It’s easier to assume that we simply failed…than to recognize how conditioned we’ve been to acquiesce to men,” writes the author. Much of the book is repetitive, but Bravo’s points are distinct and often spot-on—e.g., “We’re so boxed in by our simplistic, all-or-nothing conception of consent....The patriarchy has never provided easily accessible, effective scripts for confronting male entitlement.” The author acknowledges her privileges as a White woman in a racist society. “If you’re a white woman like me, you’ve been given ample opportunity in recent years to reflect on systemic racism and how you’re implicated,” she writes. Throughout, the author’s first-person-plural usage may offer inclusion for a specific group of readers, but it limits both her audience as well as those who may identify with some of the messages and relayed experiences yet don’t care to be spoken for. Following 200 pages largely filled with examples of women’s mistreatment, Bravo names the single solution as “relentless imagination” and asks, “Can we truly conceive of our lives outside of dominant, patriarchal frameworks?”
A work of candor that incites more questions than illuminates answers or a path forward.Pub Date: June 18, 2024
ISBN: 9781982154745
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
Maher calls out idiocy wherever he sees it, with a comedic delivery that veers between a stiletto and a sledgehammer.
The comedian argues that the arts of moderation and common sense must be reinvigorated.
Some people are born snarky, some become snarky, and some have snarkiness thrust upon them. Judging from this book, Maher—host of HBO’s Real Time program and author of The New New Rules and When You Ride Alone, You Ride With bin Laden—is all three. As a comedian, he has a great deal of leeway to make fun of people in politics, and he often delivers hilarious swipes with a deadpan face. The author describes himself as a traditional liberal, with a disdain for Republicans (especially the MAGA variety) and a belief in free speech and personal freedom. He claims that he has stayed much the same for more than 20 years, while the left, he argues, has marched toward intolerance. He sees an addiction to extremism on both sides of the aisle, which fosters the belief that anyone who disagrees with you must be an enemy to be destroyed. However, Maher has always displayed his own streaks of extremism, and his scorched-earth takedowns eventually become problematic. The author has something nasty to say about everyone, it seems, and the sarcastic tone starts after more than 300 pages. As has been the case throughout his career, Maher is best taken in small doses. The book is worth reading for the author’s often spot-on skewering of inept politicians and celebrities, but it might be advisable to occasionally dip into it rather than read the whole thing in one sitting. Some parts of the text are hilarious, but others are merely insulting. Maher is undeniably talented, but some restraint would have produced a better book.
Maher calls out idiocy wherever he sees it, with a comedic delivery that veers between a stiletto and a sledgehammer.Pub Date: May 21, 2024
ISBN: 9781668051351
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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