A nuanced look at how the recent election shaped—and was shaped by—gender.
Salon staff writer Traister makes the compelling argument that the 2008 election campaign changed the role of women in national politics.
Hillary Clinton was the first woman to win a presidential primary, and while her hard-hitting, tough campaigning made her the target of sexist vitriol, both she and President Obama received more primary votes than any other presidential candidate in history. The author writes that the 2008 election was wholly transformative. “Over a period of just a few years,” she writes, “the United States, its assumptions, its prejudices, its colors, shapes, sizes, and vocabulary, had cracked open.” In addition to Clinton, Traister sees the choice of Alaska’s first female governor for John McCain’s running mate as another strong indication of this transformation. Sarah Palin reflected this idea in her first press conference, saying, “It was rightly noted in Denver this week that Hillary left eighteen million cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling in America. But it turns out that the women of America aren’t finished yet, and we can shatter that class ceiling once and for all!” In 1984, at the age of nine, Traister’s mother let her pull the lever for the Walter Mondale ticket, which included Geraldine Ferraro as the vice-presidential candidate. Twenty-five years later she was torn between voting for Obama or Clinton. Although she ended up choosing Clinton, her indecision reflected a rift between older feminists such as Gloria Steinem, for whom electing a woman president was the only priority, and younger women like herself, who were tired of the “earnest piety” of traditional feminism and wanted “to get over ourselves a little bit, to dispense with the sacred cows, to question power and cultivate new ideas and leaders.” Traister’s dissatisfaction with Democratic centrism had made John Edwards her first choice, but her commitment to Clinton deepened by what she perceived to be a sexist media gang up against her.
A nuanced look at how the recent election shaped—and was shaped by—gender.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4391-5028-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
