The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
Thomas L. Friedman, 2005
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
672 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312425074
Summary
This new edition of The World Is Flat is Thomas L. Friedman’s account of the great changes taking place in our time, as lightning-swift advances in technology and communications put people all over the globe in touch as never before-creating an explosion of wealth in India and China, and challenging the rest of us to run even faster just to stay in place.
This updated and expanded edition features more than a hundred pages of fresh reporting and commentary, drawn from Friedman’s travels around the world and across the American heartland--from anyplace where the flattening of the world is being felt.
In The World Is Flat, Friedman at once shows "how and why globalization has now shifted into warp drive" (Robert Wright, Slate) and brilliantly demystifies the new flat world for readers, allowing them to make sense of the often bewildering scene unfolding before their eyes. With his inimitable ability to translate complex foreign policy and economic issues, he explains how the flattening of the world happened at the dawn of the twenty-first century; what it means to countries, companies, communities, and individuals; how governments and societies can, and must, adapt; and why terrorists want to stand in the way.
More than ever, The World Is Flat is an essential update on globalization, its successes and discontents, powerfully illuminated by one of our most respected journalists. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 20, 1953
• Where—Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
• Education—B.A., Brandeis University; M.A., Oxford
• Awards—Pulitzer Prizes for international reporting, 1983 and
1988; National Book Award;1989; Pulitzer Prize for
commentary, 2002
• Currently—lives in the Washington, D.C. area
Thomas L. Friedman has won the Pulitzer Prize three times for his work at the New York Times, where he serves as the foreign affairs columnist. He is the author of three previous books, all of them bestsellers: From Beirut to Jerusalem, winner of the National Book Award for nonfiction; The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization; and Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11. In 2005 The World Is Flat was given the first Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award, and Friedman was named one of America’s Best Leaders by U.S. News & World Report. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his family. (From the publisher.)
More
When September 11 drastically reshifted America's focus and priorities, Thomas L. Friedman was the author readers turned to as a guide to the dynamics of the Middle East. In a mediascape crowded with pundits, the New York Times foreign affairs columnist and author has emerged as the preeminent commentator in his field, informed by his 20-plus years as a journalist covering the rapidly shifting politics in the region.
The title of his first book, From Beirut to Jerusalem, describes his trajectory as New York Times bureau chief in both cities in the '80s. He interrupted his journalism career in 1988 when the Guggenheim Foundation awarded him a fellowship to write a book about his experiences. The result was a personal narrative that described not only his harrowing experiences in Lebanon and Israel but also contained exposition about the roots of his interest in the Middle East, a visit to Israel that burgeoned into a full-blown obsession. Friedman himself put it best, in the book's prelude: "It is a strange, funny, sometimes violent, and always unpredictable road, this road from Beirut to Jerusalem, and in many ways, I have been traveling it all my adult life." From Beirut to Jerusalem won the National Book Award and spent a year on the Times bestseller list.
This road analogy is one of several Friedman will make over the course of a column or book. He reduces the intimidation factor of complex subjects by offering ample (but not copious) background, plain but intelligent language, and occasional humor. On Iraq's history before Saddam: "Romper Room it was not." On globalization: "If [it] were a sport, it would be the 100-meter dash, over and over and over. And no matter how many times you win, you have to race again the next day."
Friedman again offered complex concepts in appealingly dramatic terms in 1989's The Lexus and the Olive Tree, his distillation of the new global economy. He sets up the contrast between the old, Cold War system ("sumo wrestling") and the new globalization system (the 100-meter dash). Another part of why Friedman can be so readable is that he sometimes makes it seem as if his life is one big kaffeeklatsch with the scholars and decision makers of the world. In a chapter from The Lexus and the Olive Tree, he mentions a comment made by a friend who is also "the leading political columnist in Jordan." The day after seeing this friend, Friedman writes, "I happen to go to Israel and meet with Jacob Frenkel, then governor of Israel's Central Bank and a University of Chicago-trained economist." Thus another illustrative point is made. Friedman frames the world not just as he sees it, but also includes the perspective of the many citizens he has made it a point to include in the dialogue.
In 2002, Friedman won a third Pulitzer for his writing in the New York Times, and the demand for his perspicacity post-September 11 makes the release of Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11 almost a foregone conclusion. Breaking the book into before, during, and after, Friedman presents what he calls a "word album" of America's response to the tragedy. It is undeniably a changed world, and Friedman is undeniably the man to help readers make sense of it.
Extras
• Friedman lives with his wife Ann and daughters Orly and Natalie in Bethesda, Maryland, a suburb of Washington.
• In high school, Friedman became "insufferable" in his obsession with Israel, he says. He wrote in From Beirut to Jersualem: "When the Syrians arrested thirteen Jews in Damascus, I wore a button for weeks that said Free the Damascus 13, which most of my high-school classmates thought referred to an underground offshoot of the Chicago 7. I recall my mother saying to me gently, 'Is that really necessary?' when I put the button on one Sunday morning to wear to our country-club brunch."
• As the chief diplomatic correspondent for the New York Times from 1989 to 1992, Friedman logged some 500,000 miles following Secretary of State James Baker and chronicling the end of the Cold War. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Terrorism remains a threat, and we will all continue to be fascinated by upheavals in Lebanon, events in Iran and reforms in Egypt. But ultimately these trends are unlikely to shape the world's future. The countries of the Middle East have been losers in the age of globalization, out of step in an age of free markets, free trade and democratic politics. The world's future -- the big picture -- is more likely to be shaped by the winners of this era. And if the United States thought it was difficult to deal with the losers, the winners present an even thornier set of challenges. This is the implication of the New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman's excellent new book, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century.
Fareed Zakaria - The New York Times
The World Is Flat continues the franchise Friedman has made for himself as a great explicator of and cheerleader for globalization, building upon his 1999 The Lexus and the Olive Tree. Like its predecessor, this book showcases Friedman's gift for lucid dissections of abstruse economic phenomena, his teacher's head, his preacher's heart, his genius for trend-spotting and his sometimes maddening inability to take himself out of the frame. It also shares some of the earlier volume's excitement (mirroring Rajesh Rao's) and hesitations about whether we're still living in an era dominated by old-fashioned states or in a postmodern, globalized era where states matter far less and the principal engine of change is a leveled playing field for international trade.
Warren Bass - The Washington Post
Lively and provocative as always, Friedman returns with an updated thesis on globalization. In The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Friedman argued that technological innovation, foreign investment, capital flows, and trade were transforming the world — breaking down national borders, constraining governments, and triggering grand struggles between nationalism and the forces of economic integration. Here he argues — in a swirl of anecdotes about software designers, intrepid entrepreneurs, globetrotting investors, and the famous telephone call centers in Bangalore, India — that globalization has reached a new stage. Now individuals, rather than governments or corporations, are the agents of change, empowered by e-mail, computers, teleconferencing, and production networks, all of which are drawing more and more people around the world into competition and cooperation on an equal footing. In this sense, Friedman argues, the world is becoming flat, and his book is organized as a sort of travel guide to globalization, a kinetic portrait of the wired global village. The rest of the book examines how countries, companies, and workers will need to adapt to flatness. For the United States, this entails, above all, investing in education, technology, and training.
But Friedman's image of a flat earth is profoundly misleading — a view of the world from a seat in business class. Flatness is another way of describing the transnational search by companies for cheap labor, an image that misses the pervasiveness of global inequality and the fact that much of the developing world remains mired in poverty and misery. It also misses the importance of the global geopolitical hierarchy, which guarantees the provision of stability, property rights, and other international public goods. The rise of China and India is less about flatness than it is about dramatic upheavals in the mountains and valleys of the global geopolitical map.
Foreign Affairs
(Starred review.) Before 9/11, New York Times columnist Friedman was best known as the author of The Lexus and the Olive Tree, one of the major popular accounts of globalization and its discontents. Having devoted most of the last four years of his column to the latter as embodied by the Middle East, Friedman picks up where he left off, saving al-Qaeda et al. for the close. For Friedman, cheap, ubiquitous telecommunications have finally obliterated all impediments to international competition, and the dawning "flat world" is a jungle pitting "lions" and "gazelles," where "economic stability is not going to be a feature" and "the weak will fall farther behind." Rugged, adaptable entrepreneurs, by contrast, will be empowered. The service sector (telemarketing, accounting, computer programming, engineering and scientific research, etc.), will be further outsourced to the English-spoken abroad; manufacturing, meanwhile, will continue to be off-shored to China. As anyone who reads his column knows, Friedman agrees with the transnational business executives who are his main sources that these developments are desirable and unstoppable, and that American workers should be preparing to "create value through leadership" and "sell personality." This is all familiar stuff by now, but the last 100 pages on the economic and political roots of global Islamism are filled with the kind of close reporting and intimate yet accessible analysis that have been hard to come by. Add in Friedman's winning first-person interjections and masterful use of strategic wonksterisms, and this book should end up on the front seats of quite a few Lexuses and SUVs of all stripes.
Publishers Weekly
Discussion Questions
Introduction
Three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman delivers a vivid account of the human element behind both the triumphs and the perils of globalization. This timely and essential report from the front lines of offshoring, outsourcing, and other "flattening" factors in our world makes sense of the often bewildering economic, political, and security issues currently at play in the international realm. Friedman examines hundreds of fascinating pieces in this puzzle-from the intricate systems that produce rich rewards for Wal-Mart to Y2K's role in rocketing the careers of computer scientists in India-and assembles them with refreshing clarity.
Whether in Bangalore or Beijing, Friedman asks brilliant questions of everyone he encounters. The truth he distills from their responses brings a new perspective to the ways in which CEOs and religious radicals, entrepreneurs and garden-variety consumers, all create ripples that stir the geopolitical tide The World Is Flat shows how each of us has an undeniable stake in globalization.
_________________
1. The first chapter in The World Is Flat recalls the voyage of Columbus, colonization, and industrialization. Are the motivations behind twenty-first-century globalization much different from the ones recorded throughout history?
2. Thomas L. Friedman discusses the many occupations that can now be outsourced or offshored, including his own job as a journalist. Could your job be done by someone in another country? Could you do your job better from home, as the JetBlue telephone agents do? Would you feel comfortable knowing that your taxes had been prepared by an overseas accountant, or your CAT scan read by an overseas radiologist? (Chapter One)
3. The second chapter outlines "Ten Forces That Flattened the World," ranging from the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, to the open-source software movement. In what way did politics influence entrepreneurship in the 1990s? What psychological impact did November 9 have on the world, particularly when paired with new means for global communication?
4. What is your opinion of the open-source movement? Should there be any limit to the amount of freedom, including "freedom" from the demand to make a profit, in the technology marketplace? (Chapter Two)
5. What qualities enabled India to take center stage when the looming Y2K scenario generated unprecedented demand for programmers? What can other nations learn from India's success in this realm? What are India's greatest vulnerabilities? (Chapter Two)
6. Discuss the ruthless efficiency demanded by supply-chaining. In the long run, does it benefit consumers? Do you believe it enhances or reduces production quality? (Chapter Two)
7. Were you familiar with the concept of "insourcing" prior to reading The World Is Flat? Does it matter to you whether your computer is repaired by an employee of Toshiba or of UPS? Should it matter? (Chapter Two)
8. Friedman calls the tenth flattener "steroids." Are these crucial to success, or are they luxuries? Will the globe's nonsteroidal citizens be able to compete without them? (Chapter Two)
9. In what ways has the Triple Convergence affected your day-to-day life? (Chapter Three)
10. Discuss the "Indiana versus India" anecdote, recounted in the second section of Chapter Four. Which approach benefits Americans more: offshoring state projects and cutting taxpayer expenditures, or paying higher wages to maintain job security at home?
11. Chapter Six, "The Untouchables," features the story of Friedman's childhood friend Bill Greer. What does his story indicate about flattening in the creative fields? Will illustrators lose out to Illustrator? What would it take for you to become an untouchable?
12. Chapter Seven, "The Quiet Crisis," outlines three dirty secrets regarding American dominance: fewer young Americans pursuing careers in math and science, and the demise of both ambition and brainpower among American youth. What accounts for this? What would it take to restore academic rigor and the enthusiasm enjoyed during the "man on the moon" days?
13. Which of the proposals in Chapter Eight, "This Is Not a Test," would you be able to implement?
14. In Chapter Nine's third section, "I Can Only Get It for You Retail," Friedman offers a vivid portrait of the "neighborhoods" comprising various parts of the globe today. How will those neighborhoods look one hundred years from now? Will America still be a gated community, and Asia "the other side of the tracks"?
15. Friedman contemplates the cultural traits (such as motivated, educated workers and leaders who don't squander the nation's treasure) that drive a nation's success. He uses this to illustrate why Mexico, despite NAFTA, has become the tortoise while China has become the hare. Does America fit Friedman's cultural profile as a nation poised for prosperity? (Chapter Nine)
16. Do you work for a company that is implementing any of Friedman's coping strategies? Which of them would be the most controversial in your industry? (Chapter Ten)
17. What do you make of the approach taken by Bill Gates's foundation to combat disease? In your opinion, what are the roots of the public-health crisis in the Third World? (Chapter Eleven)
18. How did the book's images of India compare to your previous perceptions of it, from the country-club atmosphere described on the first page to the tragedy of the untouchables? (Chapters One and Eleven)
19. Compare The World Is Flat and Longitudes and Attitudes to Friedman's pre-9/11 books, The Lexus and the Olive Tree and From Beirut to Jerusalem. Has the author's approach to current affairs changed much since 9/11? Has al-Qaeda achieved any of its political goals in the fifteen-year span represented by all four books?
20. Do you have faith in Michael Dell's theory of conflict prevention? What can we do to ensure that the strategic optimists win? And when they do, what dreams do you have for the world they will create? (Chapter Twelve).
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
Mary Roach, 2003
W.W. Norton & Company
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780393324822
Summary
Outrageously funny, irreverent . . . (Denver Post)
For 2,000 years, cadavers—some willingly, some unwittingly—have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest undertakings.
In this fascinating, ennobling account, Mary Roach visits the good deeds of cadavers over the centuries and, in so doing, tells the engrossing story of our bodies when we are no longer with them. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 20, 1959
• Rasied—Etna, New Hampshire, USA
• Education—B.A., Weslyan University
• Awards—see below
• Currently—lives in Oakland, California
Mary Roach is an American author, specializing in popular science. To date, she has published five books: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (2003), Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife (2005) (published in some markets as Six Feet Over: Adventures in the Afterlife), Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex (2008), Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void (2010), and Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal (2013).
Roach was raised in Etna, New Hampshire. She received a bachelor's degree in psychology from Wesleyan University in 1981. After college, Roach moved to San Francisco, California and spent a few years working as a freelance copy editor. She worked as a columnist and also worked in public relations for a brief time. Her writing career began while working part-time at the San Francisco Zoological Society, producing press releases on topics such as elephant wart surgery. On her days off from the SFZS, she wrote freelance articles for the San Francisco Chronicle's Sunday Magazine.
From 1996 to 2005 Roach was part of The Grotto, a San Francisco-based project and community of working writers and filmmakers. It was in this community that Roach would get the push she needed to break into book writing. While being interviewed by Alex C. Telander of BookBanter, Roach answers the question of how she got started on her first book:
A few of us every year [from The Grotto] would make predictions for other people, where they'll be in a year. So someone made the prediction that, "Mary will have a book contract." I forgot about it and when October came around I thought, I have three months to pull together a book proposal and have a book contract. This is what literally lit the fire under my butt.
Early career
In 1986, she sold a humor piece about the IRS to the San Francisco Chronicle. That piece led to a number of humorous, first-person essays and feature articles for such publications as Vogue, GQ, The New York Times Magazine, Discover Magazine, National Geographic, Outside Magazine, and Wired. She has also written articles for Salon.com and tech-gadget reviews for Inc.com. An article by Roach, entitled "The C word: Dead man driving," was published in the Journal of Clinical Anatomy. Roach has had monthly columns in Reader's Digest (“My Planet”) and Sports Illustrated for Women (“The Slightly Wider World of Sports”).
Besides being a best selling author, Roach is involved in many other projects on the side. Roach reviews books for The New York Times and was the guest editor of the Best American Science and Nature Writing's 2011 edition. She also serves as a member of the Mars Institute's Advisory Board and was recently asked to join the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary.
Personal life
Roach has an office in downtown Oakland and lives in the Glenview neighborhood of Oakland with her husband Ed Rachles, an illustrator and graphic designer. She also has two step-daughters.
While Roach has often been quoted saying that she does not have much free time between writing books, she is very fond of backpacking and travel. The latter she has been able to do a great deal of while doing research for her articles and books. Roach has visited all seven continents twice. She has been to Antarctica a few times as part of the National Science Foundation's Polar Program. In 1997, she visited Antarctica to write an article for Discover Magazine on meteorite hunting with meteorite hunter Ralph Harvey.
Recognition
In 1995, Roach's article "How to Win at Germ Warfare" was a National Magazine Award Finalist. In the article, Roach conducts an interview with microbiologist Chuck Gerba of the University of Arizona who describes a scientific study where bacteria and virus particles become aerosolized upon flushing a toilet: "Upon flushing, as many as 28,000 virus particles and 660,000 bacteria [are] jettisoned from the bowl."
In 1996, her article on earthquake-proof, bamboo houses, "The Bamboo Solution", took the American Engineering Societies' Engineering Journalism Award in the general interest magazine category. In this article the reader learns from Jules Janssen, a civil engineer, that bamboo is "stronger than wood, brick, and concrete...A short, straight column of bamboo with a top surface area of 10 square centimeters could support an 11,000-pound elephant."
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers was a New York Times Bestseller, a 2003 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick, and one of Entertainment Weekly's Best Books of 2003. Stiff also won the Amazon.com Editor's Choice award in 2003, was voted as a Borders Original Voices book, and was the winner of the Elle Reader's Prize. The book has been translated into 17 languages, including Hungarian (Hullamerev) and Lithuanian (Negyveilai).[6] Stiff was also selected for Washington State University's Common Reading Program in 2008-09.
Roach's column "My Planet" (Reader's Digest) was runner-up in the humor category of the 2005 National Press Club awards. Roach's second book, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, was the recipient of the Elle Reader's Prize in October 2005. Spook was also listed as a New York Times Notable Books pick in 2005, as well as a New York Times Bestseller. In 2008, Roach's book, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, was chosen as the New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice, it was in The Boston Globe's Top 5 Science Books, and it was listed as a bestseller in several other publications.
In 2011, Roach's book, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, was chosen as the book of the year for the 7th annual One City One Book: San Francisco Reads literary event program. Packing for Mars was also 6th on the New York Times Best Seller list.[22]
In 2012, Roach was the recipient of the Harvard Secular Society's Rushdie Award for her outstanding lifetime achievement in cultural humanism. The same year, she received a Special Citation in Scientific inquiry from Maximum Fun.
Style
The common theme throughout all of Roach's books is a literary treatment of the human body. Roach says of her publication history,
My books are all [about the human body], Spook is a little bit of departure because it's more about the soul rather than the flesh and blood body, but most of my books are about human bodies in unusual circumstances.
When asked by Peter Sagal, of NPR, specifically how she picks her topics, she replied, "Well, its got to have a little science, it's got to have a little history, a little humor—and something gross."
While Roach does not possess a science degree, she attempts to take complex ideas and turn them into something that the average reader can understand. She takes the reader with her through the steps of her research, from learning about the material to getting to know the people who study it, as she described in a public dialog with Adam Savage:
Make no mistake, good science writing is medicine. It is a cure for ignorance and fallacy. Good science writing peels away the blindness, generates wonder, and brings the open palm to the forehead: "Oh! Now I get it!"
Regarding her skepticism about the world around her, Roach states in her book Spook,
Flawed as it is, science remains the most solid god I've got. And so I've decided to turn to it, to see what it had to say on the topic of life after death. Because I know what religion says, and it perplexes me. It doesn't deliver a single, coherent, scientifically sensible or provable scenario… Science seemed the better bet. (Author bio from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Our own instinctive discomfort with death provides fodder for Roach's dry sense of humor throughout the book .
Ana Marie Cox - Washington Post
It's a rare talent that can make people want to throw up and laugh at the same time.
Roy Rivenberg - Los Angeles Times Book Review
Outrageously funny, irreverent—but respectful....so delightfully written, this book is difficult to put down.
Brian Richard Boylan - Denver Post
"Uproariously funny" doesn't seem a likely description for a book on cadavers. However, Roach, a Salon and Reader's Digest columnist, has done the nearly impossible and written a book as informative and respectful as it is irreverent and witty. From her opening lines ("The way I see it, being dead is not terribly far off from being on a cruise ship. Most of your time is spent lying on your back"), it is clear that she's taking a unique approach to issues surrounding death. Roach delves into the many productive uses to which cadavers have been put, from medical experimentation to applications in transportation safety research (in a chapter archly called "Dead Man Driving") to work by forensic scientists quantifying rates of decay under a wide array of bizarre circumstances. There are also chapters on cannibalism, including an aside on dumplings allegedly filled with human remains from a Chinese crematorium, methods of disposal (burial, cremation, composting) and "beating-heart" cadavers used in organ transplants. Roach has a fabulous eye and a wonderful voice as she describes such macabre situations as a plastic surgery seminar with doctors practicing face-lifts on decapitated human heads and her trip to China in search of the cannibalistic dumpling makers. Even Roach's digressions and footnotes are captivating, helping to make the book impossible to put down. Agent, Jay Mandel. (Apr.) Forecast: Do we detect a trend to necrophilia? Two years ago it was mummies; in the last few months we have seen an account of the journeys of the corpse of Elmer McCurdy and a defense of undertakers; and now comes Roach's disquisition on cadavers. But death is, after all, a subject that just won't go away.
Publishers Weekly
Roach writes in an insouciant style and displays her metier in tangents about bizarre incidents in pathological history. Death may have the last laugh, but, in the meantime, Roach finds merriment in the macabre. —Gilbert Taylor
Booklist
Despite the irreverent, macabre title, this is a respectful and serious examination of what happens to cadavers, past and present. Salon columnist Roach explains how surgeons and doctors use cadavers donated for research purposes to help the living, and also examines potential new variations on how we bury the dead. She explores some interesting historical side avenues as well: the use of corpses to test the guillotine, earlier anatomical beliefs, grave robbers, the elixirs various civilizations concocted out of corpses for medicinal purposes, and, most important, how cadavers provided valuable information to us for understanding such plane crashes as TWA Flight 800. Roach also addresses philosophical issues. —Michael D. Cramer, Schwarz BioSciences, RTP, NC
Library Journal
Fascinating, unexpectedly fresh and funny look at the multiplicity of ways in which cadavers benefit the living. Author of the "My Planet" column in Reader s Digest and a regular contributor to Salon.com s "Health and Body" section, Roach displays here a knack for persuading morticians, scientists, engineers, and others whose work involves corpses to let her watch them at their labors. From the opening chapter, in which 40 severed human heads are prepped for a plastic-surgery seminar, to the final one, in which whole bodies are plastinated with liquid polymers for a museum exhibit, she proves herself a keen observer and unflagging questioner. Roach watches an embalming at a college for morticians and visits a university study of human decomposition. She shows the value of cadavers in car-crash testing, in weapons research by the US Army, in investigations into airline disasters, in studies of the crucifixion and the guillotine. Not only do dead bodies provide organ transplants for fellow humans but they may, Roach reports, soon be transformed into compost--at least in ecologically aware Sweden. As for other exotic uses, a chapter subtitled "Medical Cannibalism and the Case of the Human Dumplings" tells it all. While Roach provides a vivid picture of the macabre activities she witnesses, it s her offbeat musings, admissions, and reactions that give such life to her tales of the dead. She also provides history, mostly focusing on body-snatchers and the anatomists who used their services. Roach delights in imparting odd information, such as the fact that 18th-century students at certain Scottish medical schools could pay their tuition in corpses rather than cash, and when the curious factsunearthed by her research don t fit neatly into her narrative, she slips them into droll footnotes. Informative, yes; entertaining, absolutely.
Kirkus Reviews
1. In her introduction to Stiff, Mary Roach remarks that "death makes us helplessly polite." Why is it that we're compelled to use polite language when discussing death? Why are we often afraid to discuss it in the way Roach has done here?
2. Roach discovered that students in anatomy classes tend not to enjoy touching and smelling cadavers, even though they relish the opportunity to study them. Does this surprise you? Why might someone want to work with cadavers?
3. Could one remain more psychologically and emotionally balanced in their dealings with cadavers by humanizing them, as Roach frequently does, or by objectifying them? Explain.
4. Roach describes the smell of a decomposing human: "It is dense and cloying, sweet but not flower-sweet. Halfway between rotting fruit and rotting meat." But modern embalming methods allow us to present odorless, good-looking corpses at funerals. Has modern mortuary science made death more aesthetically pleasing?
5. Dennis Shanahan, who investigated the grisly human wreckage of downed TWA Flight 800, told Roach that the hardest thing about examining Flight 800 was that most of the bodies were relatively whole. He said, "Intactness bothers me much more than the lack of it." Why might he feel this way? Do you agree or disagree?
6. Many research studies that make use of cadavers raise questions about maintaining the dignity of the deceased. For example, a ballistics study might involve decapitating a cadaver or shooting one in the face—all for the sake of gathering data to ensure that innocent civilians who are hit in the face with nonlethal bullets won't suffer disfiguring fractures. Do you think that the humanitarian benefits of experimenting on cadavers can outweigh any potential breach of respect for the dead? Why or why not?
7. The heart, cut from the chest, can keep beating on its own for as long as a minute or two. This, Roach says, reflects centuries of confusion over how exactly to define death. Have modern scientific experiments on cadavers helped us to pinpoint the precise moment when life ceases to exist and all that's left is a corpse? Explain.
8. Roach says, "On a rational level, most people are comfortable with the concept of brain death and organ donation. But on an emotional level, they may have a harder time accepting it." Some organ recipients even worry that they will take on certain characteristics of their donors. What might this say about how we link the physical human body to the human soul?
9. In Chapter 10, Roach takes us on a grand tour of cannibalism across cultures. She's compelled by the idea that economics accounts for why people throughout history have never dined regularly on each other. Humans, she says, turn out to be lousy livestock, because you have to give them more food to feed them than you'd gain in the end by eating them. How do you react to this idea?
10. In Chapter 11, Roach journeys to an island in Sweden, where a forty-seven-year-old biologist-entrepreneur has made a business of producing compost from cadavers. This business has major corporate backing and an international patent, and mortuary professionals in many countries, including the United States, are interested in representing the new technology. Do you think that the "human compost movement" could gain traction where you live?
11. Roach concludes that "it makes little sense to try to control what happens to your remains when you are no longer around to reap the joys or benefits of that control." Do you agree with her?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
Timothy Egan, 2005
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780618773473
Summary
Winner, 2006 National Book Award for Nonfiction
The Worst Hard Time is an epic story of blind hope and endurance almost beyond belief; it is also, as Tim Egan has told it, a riveting tale of bumptious charlatans, conmen, and tricksters, environmental arrogance and hubris, political chicanery, and a ruinous ignorance of nature's ways. Egan has reached across the generations and brought us the people who played out the drama in this devastated land, and uses their voices to tell the story as well as it could ever be told." — Marq de Villiers, author of Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource
The dust storms that terrorized America's High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since, and the stories of the people that held on have never been fully told. Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times journalist and author Timothy Egan follows a half-dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, going from sod homes to new framed houses to huddling in basements with the windows sealed by damp sheets in a futile effort to keep the dust out. He follows their desperate attempts to carry on through blinding black blizzards, crop failure, and the deaths of loved ones. Drawing on the voices of those who stayed and survived—those who, now in their eighties and nineties, will soon carry their memories to the grave—Egan tells a story of endurance and heroism against the backdrop of the Great Depression.
As only great history can, Egan's book captures the very voice of the times: its grit, pathos, and abiding courage. Combining the human drama of Isaac's Storm with the sweep of The American People in the Great Depression, The Worst Hard Time is a lasting and important work of American history. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Born—November 8, 1954
• Where—Seattle, Washington, USA
• Awards—Pulitizer Prize, Journalism (2001); National Book
Award, Nonfiction; Washington State Book Award (twice)
• Currently—lives in Seattle, Washington
Timothy Egan is an American Pulitzer Prize winning author who resides in Seattle, Washington. He currently contributes opinion columns to the New York Times as the paper's Pacific Northwest correspondent. In 2001, he won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for his contribution to the series "How Race is Lived in America."
In addition to his work with the New York Times, he has written six books, including The Good Rain (Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award, 1991), Breaking Blue, and Lasso the Wind.
The Worst Hard Time is his non-fiction account of those who lived through The Great Depression's Dust Bowl, for which he won the 2006 Washington State Book Award in history/biography and a 2006 National Book Award.
In 2009 he wrote The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America, which details the Great Fire of 1910 that burned about three million acres (12,000 km²) and helped shape the United States Forest Service. The book also details some of the political issues of the time focusing on Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot. Egan won a second Washington State Book Award in history/biography in 2010 for this work, and a second Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award.
In 2012 Egan published a biography of Western and Native American photographer, Edward Curtis: Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis. (From Wikipedia.)
Also see the extensive interview with Egan and his publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Book Reviews
Mr. Egan makes this iconic material fresh by focusing on the plight of a handful of families from the hardest-hit bottom of the Dust Bowl, the western edge of the Oklahoma Panhandle known as No Man's Land; Dallam County due south in the Texas Panhandle; and Baca County in southeastern Colorado.
David Laskin - New York Times
Timothy Egan's searing history of the economic and ecological collapse of the southern Great Plains during the 1930s is an epic cautionary tale. Intertwining the stories of roughly a dozen individuals and families with a grim overview of the region-wide disaster, Egan's fluent narrative chronicles the terrifying consequences of a reckless hubris that in a few decades stripped the earth of prairie grass that for centuries had protected it from erosion. The American people and their government collaborated in transforming a sea of waving, waist-high bluestem—described by William Clark on his expedition west with Meriwether Lewis in 1804 as "one of the most pleasing prospects I ever beheld"—into a blasted landscape of abandoned farms surrounded by four-foot drifts of dust, scattered with dead farm animals and useless equipment.
Wendy Smith - Washington Post
On April 14, 1935, the biggest dust storm on record descended over five states, from the Dakotas to Amarillo, Texas. People standing a few feet apart could not see each other; if they touched, they risked being knocked over by the static electricity that the dust created in the air. The Dust Bowl was the product of reckless, market-driven farming that had so abused the land that, when dry weather came, the wind lifted up millions of acres of topsoil and whipped it around in “black blizzards,” which blew as far east as New York. This ecological disaster rapidly disfigured whole communities. Egan’s portraits of the families who stayed behind are sobering and far less familiar than those of the “exodusters” who staggered out of the High Plains. He tells of towns depopulated to this day, a mother who watched her baby die of “dust pneumonia,” and farmers who gathered tumbleweed as food for their cattle and, eventually, for their children.
The New Yorker
Egan tells an extraordinary tale in this visceral account of how America's great, grassy plains turned to dust, and how the ferocious plains winds stirred up an endless series of "black blizzards" that were like a biblical plague: "Dust clouds boiled up, ten thousand feet or more in the sky, and rolled like moving mountains" in what became known as the Dust Bowl. But the plague was man-made, as Egan shows: the plains weren't suited to farming, and plowing up the grass to plant wheat—along with a confluence of economic disaster, the Depression, and a natural disaster-eight years of drought— resulted in an ecological and human catastrophe that Egan details with stunning specificity. He grounds his tale in portraits of the people who settled the plains: hardy Americans and immigrants desperate for a piece of land to call their own and lured by the lies of promoters who said the ground was arable. Egan's interviews with survivors produce tales of courage and suffering: Hazel Lucas, for instance, dared to give birth in the midst of the blight only to see her baby die of "dust pneumonia" when her lungs clogged with the airborne dirt. With characters who seem to have sprung from a novel by Sinclair Lewis or Steinbeck, and Egan's powerful writing, this account will long remain in readers' minds.
Publishers Weekly
In vivid fashion, Egan reports on the grit, the drifts, and the figures bent against the gusts. All the elements of the iconic dust bowl photographs come together in the author's evocative portrait of those who first prospered and then suffered during the 1930s drought. —Gilbert Taylor
Booklist
Grim, riveting account by New York Times reporter Egan makes clear that, although hurricanes and floods have grabbed recent headlines, America's worst assault from Mother Nature came in the form of ten long years of drought and dust. The "dust bowl" of the 1930s covered 100 million acres spread over five states: Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Nebraska and Colorado. From 1930 to 1935, nearly a million people left their farms, littered with animal corpses and stunted crops. Schools closed. Towns simply disappeared. Thousands died from "dust pneumonia," a new condition born of swallowing and inhaling the swirling topsoil. The author personalizes this tragedy by focusing on a handful of hardy settlers who came to America's heartland with high hopes and boundless energy, then watched with growing despair as the earth turned against them. In truth, the dust bowl was largely a human creation. The great southern plains, once covered with native grasses that fed the buffalo and held the soil in place, were essentially stripped bare in the 1920s by wheat-farmers eager to cash in on cheap land and high grain prices. The newly invented tractor made the job easier, and unusually wet weather in the late '20s made farming on the arid plains seem feasible. But then the Depression hit, wheat prices crashed and once-bountiful farms went fallow, abandoned to the deepening drought and ever-blowing winds that literally sent the soil skyward. In the midst of disaster, Egan finds heroes. Among them is country physician Doc Dawson, who opened a sanitarium for dust pneumonia victims, lost all his money farming and spent his last, penniless years running a soup kitchen. Stark and powerful, a gripping if depressing read and a timely reminder that a Nature abused can exact a terrible retribution.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Worst Hard Time:
1. Discuss what Egan presents as the reasons for the dust bowl tragedy. Was it a confluence of unforeseen events that produced the perfect storm? Or was it a man-made disaster that might have been avoided, or at least mitigated?
2. Should everyone have known better—was there enough known at the time about the impact of farming techniques on erosion?
3. Who tried to warn about the dangers of farming in the grasslands and what were the gist of their warnings? Why were they ignored? Is it simply human nature to take heed in hindsight rather than in real time?
4. Talk about the different characters in Egan's story. Which of the families' stories do you find particularly poignant? Which characters do you find most admirable?
5. What descriptions of the dust storms did you find most shocking or most tragic—Black Sunday, static electrcity, dust pneumonia, just to name a few?
6. During the disaster, 250 million people left their homes—a disapora about which Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath is written. But most residents stayed. What made them stay? Would it have been better to have left? Which choice would you have made?
7. What was the political outfall of the dust bowl? How did Washington eventually respond? What have been the lasting effects?
8. What lessons, if any, have we learned from the dust bowl castastrophe—about how human actions, well-intentioned or not, can lead to environmental damage? Is there anything comparable on the horizon today?
9. "Surviving the Dust Bowl," a 2007 documentary, part of the American Experience series on PBS, would make a valuable contribution to any book club discussion. The film footage is stunning. You could get a copy through your public library or through Netflix.
10. You might also pair this work with Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath and discuss the human tragedies—and bravery—in both accounts.
11. Finally, don't miss Timothy Egan's extensive interview with his publisher, Houghton Mifflin.
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autiobiography
Sidney Poitier, 2000
HarperCollins
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061357909
Summary
I have no wish to play the pontificating fool, pretending that I've suddenly come up with the answers to all life's questions. Quite that contrary, I began this book as an exploration, an exercise in self-questing. In other words, I wanted to find out, as I looked back at a long and complicated life, with many twists and turns, how well I've done at measuring up to the values I myself have set.
In this luminous memoir, a true American icon looks back on his celebrated life and career. His body of work is arguably the most morally significant in cinematic history, and the power and influence of that work are indicative of the character of the man behind the many storied roles. Sidney Poitier here explores these elements of character and personal values to take his own measure—as a man, as a husband and a father, and as an actor.
Poitier credits his parents and his childhood on tiny Cat Island in the Bahamas for equipping him with the unflinching sense of right and wrong and of self-worth that he has never surrendered and that have dramatically shaped his world. "In the kind of place where I grew up," recalls Poitier, "what's coming at you is the sound of the sea and the smell of the wind and momma's voice and the voice of your dad and the craziness of your brothers and sisters...and that's it." Without television, radio, and material distractions to obscure what matters most, he could enjoy the simple things, endure the long commitments, and find true meaning in his life.
Poitier was uncompromising as he pursued a personal and public life that would honor his upbringing and the invaluable legacy of his parents. Just a few years after his introduction to indoor plumbing and the automobile, Poitier broke racial barrier after racial barrier to launch a pioneering acting career. Committed to the notion that what one does for a living articulates to who one is, Poitier played only forceful and affecting characters who said something positive, useful, and lasting about the human condition.
Here is Poitier's own introspective look at what has informed his performances and his life. Poitier explores the nature of sacrifice and commitment, price and humility, rage and forgiveness, and paying the price for artistic integrity. What emerges is a picture of a man in the face of limits—his own and the world's. A triumph of the spirit, The Measure of a Man captures the essential Poitier. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February 20, 1927
• Where—Miami, Florida, USA
• Reared— in Cat Island, The Bahamas
• Awards—Academy Award for Best Actor; Life Achievement
Award, Screen Actors Guild
Sidney Poitier was the first black actor to win the Academy Award for best actor for his outstanding performance in Lilies of the Field in 1963. His landmark films include The Defiant Ones, A Patch of Blue, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and To Sir, With Love. He has starred in over forty films, directed nine, and written four. He is the author of two autobiographies: This Life and the "Oprah's Book Club" pick and New York Times bestseller The Measure of a Man. Among many other accolades, Poitier has been awarded the Screen Actors Guild's highest honor, the Life Achievement Award, for an outstanding career and humanitarian accomplishment. He is married, has six daughters, four grandchildren, and one great-granddaughter. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Poitier's second autobiography—reflective, generous, humane —is moving, as Poitier's memory keeps returning to the values and struggles of his parents.
New York Times Book Review
Reading The Measure of a Man is somewhat akin to having a worthwhile conversation with a revered older relative; he doesn’t always tell you what you want to hear, but you appreciate it just the same.
Washington Post
With the unwavering sense of dignity and worth.... This man’s authenticity is earned by the life he describes.
Los Angeles Times
Sidney Poitier's The Measure Of A Man is the autobiography of the only black actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor for his outstanding performance in Lilies of the Field in 1963. He is also the thirty-sixth recipient of the Screen Actors Guild's Life Achievement Award for his outstanding career and humanitarian accomplishments. In The Measure Of A Man, a complete and unabridged eight-hour, 6 cassette audiobook edition narrated by Poitier, we are presented with the elements of his character and personal values that are key to his international renown both professionally and personally. His introspective examination of what the life experiences which informed his performances we are gifted with a picture of a man of truth, passion, balance, and a triumph of the spirit over a multitude of hardships and obstacles. Flawlessly produced and performed, The Measure Of A Man is "must" listening for all Sidney Poitier fans.
Internet Book Watch
(Audio version.) Given the personal nature of this narrative, it's impossible to imagine hearing anyone other than Poitier, with his distinctive, resonant voice and perfect enunciation, tell the story. In his second memoir Poitier talks about his childhood in the Caribbean, where he was terribly poor by American standards, but quite happy, swimming and climbing all he could. One of eight kids, Poitier was sent to live with an older brother in Miami when he started to get into difficulties as a teen. But frustrated by his inability to earn a living and by the disparaging way whites treated him, Poitier left Miami for New York. There he worked as a dishwasher, started a drama class and launched a celebrated acting career that led to starring roles in such classics as To Sir, with Love and Raisin in the Sun. Poitier's rendition of these events is so moving that listeners will wish this audio adaptation were twice as long.
Publishers Weekly
Winner of this year's Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album, this production is a delight in every way, with the narration by Poitier appropriately dramatic and mellifluous. The story of his meteoric and fated rise to fame as a successful actor respected by his peers almost belies his hardscrabble beginnings on Cat Island off the coast of the Bahamas. And the "lucky star" Poitier falls under is actually the common denominator among all successful people: a willingness to work harder, and an innate resourcefulness, including the ability to listen to one's own instincts and to move when the time is right. If this sounds philosophical, it is; the book is much more than another celebrity memoir. It is not only Poitier's reflection on a long life in the world of arts and entertainment but also a statement of his personal views on what it means to be a good man, honed in discussions with friends and fellow travelers on life's journey who were themselves of a philosophical frame of mind. Highly recommended. —Mark Pumphrey, Polk Cty. P.L., Columbus, NC
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Measure of a Man:
1. Talk about Poitier's role in changing American's film treatment of African Americans—from passive servants and bunglers to doctors, dectives and teachers. How effective, if at all, do you think Hollywood has been in lowering racial barriers in the larger American society? Can film create a change in attitudes...or do they simply reflect a change already taking place?
2. At some point, Poiter acknowledges that hope is irrational yet necessary for survival, a statement that seems a contradiction in terms. What does he mean?
3. Talk about the struggles of Poitier's parents? To what degree, if any, did his parents' resilience shape Poitier's life?
4. Attitudes changed in the late '60's, by which time Poitier was villified as Hollywood's Uncle Tom. What was meant by that criticism? What drove it, how fair or unfair was it, and how has Poitier reacted to it—then and now?
5. Do you sense an underlying anger in Poitier's memoir? Does it affect how you view Poitier or American society?
6. Talk about Poitier's statement that fear of failure can be even more destructive than failure itself. What does he mean?
7. How does Poitier's personal history reflect America's history? For starters, consider the conditions African-American actors faced when Poitier took to the stage in the 1940's and 1950's.
8. Overall, has this book changed, or reconfirmed, your ideas of Sidney Poitier and/or race in America?
9. Who are some of the other African-American figures who stood on the shoulders of Poitier and who, in turn, offered their shoulders for others to stand on—in other words, what other black individuals made a difference in changing racial attitudes?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Sex and the City
Candace Bushnell, 1997
Grand Central Publishing
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780446673549
Summary
Here is the collection of columns that inspired the addictive and multiple award-winning HBO series! Sex and the City offers a tantalizing glimpse of the openings, launch parties, and celebrity affairs that keep society amused.
Throughout, a cast of characters—the troubled writer, the successful businessman, the famous underwear model, and others-searches for true love...or at least someone to go home with at the end of the night. It's a chronicle of the true-life adventures of the "in" crowd that is often hilarious and sometimes terrifying, but always mesmerizing. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—December 1, 1958
• Where—Glastonbury, Connecticut, USA
• Education—attended Rice University
• Currently—lives in New York City
Candace Bushnell is an American author and columnist based in New York City. She is best known for writing a sex column that was turned into a book, Sex and the City, which became the basis of the immensely popular television series of the same name, and its subsequent film adaptation. Bushnell married New York City American Ballet Theater ballet artist Charles Askegaard on July 4, 2002.
Bushnell was born in Glastonbury, Connecticut. Upon dropping out of Rice University in the late 1970s, she was known throughout New York City as a party-goer and socialite. One of her favorite places was Studio 54. Later on in life, she got a job as a columnist in the New York Observer.
In 1994, her editor-in-chief asked her if she wanted to write a column for the paper, and she accepted the job. She wanted a column based on the adventures she and her friends usually spoke about, and she called it "Sex and the City."
In 1998, HBO started airing a show, Sex and the City, based on, but not exactly like, Bushnell's column. The Sex and the City television show enhanced Bushnell's already growing fame. The television series ceased original production in 2004, with the last episode airing on HBO in February 2004. It is now in syndication.
Many other writers have compared the Carrie Bradshaw character on the television show to Bushnell because Carrie, like Bushnell, is also a newspaper sex and lifestyles columnist who enjoys the New York nightlife and, indeed, Candace's initials are the same as Carrie's. Bushnell has stated in several interviews that Carrie Bradshaw is her alter ego. Bushnell was one of three judges for the 2005 reality television show Wickedly Perfect on CBS. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
The media celebrities! The heartbreak! The strappy sandals! This bumptious collection of Candace Bushnell's "Sex and the City" columns from the New York Observer provides a prime banquette seat to witness the intense and rather frightening mating rituals of the attractive, successful, over-35-and-still-unmarried set.
Those who follow Bushnell's column will be familiar with much of the material here; indeed, a fair portion of the chapters have run in the Observer in the last six months. Placed between hard covers, however, this so-called sex column takes on a different tone — it becomes a kind of serial novel that works as both a comedy of manners and a class study of the current Age of Non-Innocence.
In her search for love amidst an endless stream of lunches and cocktail parties, Bushnell paints a bleak but funny portrait of her sisters in heels as they get everything they want except for a husband and children. We follow the intrepid, hungover "reporter" from a swingers' club (where the hottest thing was the buffet table) to a male forum on threesomes; from dinner with men who bed models to a bawdy ladies' tea where a serial dater is dissected. During the last third of the book, the voice shifts from the first person to that of Carrie (aka Bushnell). As she chronicles her relationship with Mr. Big (aka cigar-chomping Vogue publisher Ron Galotti), you may begin to understand why these womens' relationships fail.
One compelling aspect of these juicy, fast-reading pieces is that they offer an insider's view of a very elite Manhattan. Sure, names have been changed and events modified (and who knows how she records those quotes), but if you're a bold-faced-name junkie, you know who she's talking about, or can at least enjoy speculating. Bushnell delivers the bad news about love in Manhattan in an engaging "he said/she said" style ("He gave her more drugs and she gave him a blow job"), as though she were hoarsely whispering in your ear during lunch at the Royalton.
As compelling as Bushnell can be, by the midway point of Sex and the City, the book's message is painfully clear: In her New York, locating and securing a powerful husband is, sadly, a woman's ultimate accomplishment.
Christie Muhlke - Salon
"We're leading sensory saturated lives," announces jetsetting photographer and playboy Peter Beard in a roundtable discussion of ménages à trois, setting the tone of opulent debasement that suffuses this collection of Bushnell's punchy, archly knowing and sharply observed sex columns from the New York Observer. Prowling the modish clubs, party circuit and weekend getaways of rich and trendy New York society (most of whose denizens are identified by pseudonyms), Bushnell offers a brash, radically unromantic perspective. She visits a sex club and dates a Bicycle Boy ("the literary romantic subspecies" whose patron saints are George Plimpton and Murray Kempton). But in most chapters she keeps to the sidelines, deploying instead her alter-ego Carrie (like the author, a blonde writer from Connecticut in her mid-30s), whose sweet if feckless romance with Mr. Big, a nondescript power player, serves as a foil for the hilarious, unsentimentalized misadventures of her peers. These include model-chasers like Barkley, 25, a painter with the face of a Botticelli angel whose parents pay for his SoHo junior loft, and Tom Peri, the "emotional Mayflower," who ferries newly dumped women to higher emotional ground and is then invariably dumped. The effect is that of an Armistead Maupin-like canvas tinged with a liberal smattering of Judith Krantz. Collected in one volume, Bushnell's characters grow generic, but in small doses these essays are brain candy that will appeal equally to urban romantics and anti-romantics.
Publishers Weekly
Fascinating and haunting insights into the love lives of the rich and randy in New York. Bushnell has gleaned pieces from her popular New York Observer column and combined them into an oddly touching collection. While the privileged, beautiful, pony-skin-boot-wearing folk she reports on seem ripe for parody, Bushnell has chosen to humanize them. The earlier articles feature Bushnell herself; she wisely removes herself from the later pieces, writing with the detached grace of an early Didion, and allows her friend (and alter ego?) Carrie to do the reporting. In one story, Carrie and her friends journey to Connecticut's wealthy suburbs to attend a wedding shower, complaining all the way. Bushnell perfectly captures the poignant moment when the New York group, glossy and single, realize that they are in fact jealous of their settled friend. The realization leads to a series of confessions: One woman nervously admits that she broke her ankle while rollerblading in an attempt to impress the younger man she was dating. Many of these pieces focus on the rise and fall of Carrie's relationship with "Mr. Big," who is a better date than most of the model-obsessed men she meets, but who is a "toxic bachelor" (unappreciative, self-centered, allergic to commitment) all the same. Bushnell's point, at its simplest level, is that what the glamorous women she writes about really want is a husband. But her writing is more sensitive than that, subtly catching the ways in which, beneath the veneer of Manolo Blahnik shoes and the eternal round of parties and the late nights at trendy bars, New York is a cruel place for smart, older women. Whatever lip service their male peers pay to equality, what men want is perpetual youth. Often funny and occasionally bleak, this is a captivating look at the "Age of Un-Innocence," in a city in which the glittering diversions don't quite make up for the fact that "Cupid has flown the coop."
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
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