A Bonus Post: After you finish reading my review, I suggest heading over to Book Riot where I wrote about how this book led me down the bibliography rabbit hole and some of the other books about women and politics that I’m hoping to read.
Review: Rebecca Traister’s goal in Big Girls Don’t Cry is a big one — to tell the story of women and the 2008 presidential election, a story of the country and its culture and how the public figures in this race showed how far the country has come and how much further there still is to go when it comes to addressing sex and race in our public discourse.
What It’s About: The 2008 presidential election was a big one for a number of reasons, but the narrative this book focuses on is the role of women as candidates, spouses, and commentators. Traister, a reporter for Salon, offers an account of the election, covering a range of women including Sarah Palin, Tina Fey, Katic Couric, and Hillary Clinton and exploring the different reactions the candidates received throughout the election season.
A Note: This post has nothing to do with books. It’s about the current political situation in Wisconsin, which is also important to me. But if you’re not interested in that, feel free to skip this post and go about your day.
Major happenings in Wisconsin this week have helped inspire me about politics again. A little background: Our Republican governor, Scott Walker, introduced a “Budget Repair Bill” designed to deal with Wisconsin’s upcoming budget shortfall of $136.7 million. (A shortfall he may have engineered himself). However, the bill went a lot further than just some fiscal issues.
The thing I remember most clearly about Food Fray by molecular biologist Lisa H. Weasel is that it made me both curious about and angry with Monsanto, a “U.S.-based multinational agricultural biotechnology corporation” (thanks, Wikipedia), that seems to have it’s tentacles in everything I love to eat.
From previous food reading, I knew Monsanto was a bit shifty, but the company has really exceeded my expectations: patenting genetically modified foods then suing family farmers after those genetically modified seeds happened to pollinate their corn and pushing for a ban on labeling modified milk. Monsanto is messing with milk, and I love milk!
One Sentence Summary: Maira Kalman, an author and illustrator, spent a year exploring both well-known and quirky aspects of American democracy and what it means.
One Sentence Review: And the Pursuit of Happiness is a delightful book to read, both because of the lovely illustrations and because of the thoughtful and optimistic away Kalman approaches the questions of the whole American democratic experiment.
Why I Read It: I was a little familiar with Kalman’s New York Times Blog, And the Pursuit of Happiness, so was excited to read the book it inspired.
One Sentence Summary: Hunger: An Unnatural History is an overview of the science, sociology, and moral implications of hunger and it’s impact across the globe.
One Sentence Review: This book covers a little too much territory for my tastes, but it still provides a well-written and important overview of the impact of hunger on an individual and society.
The inaugural edition of Narrative Nonfiction 5 features five books by authors that went in-depth covering “current” events in the United States. I put current in quotes because most of these books are more than 10 years old, which makes current a bit of a stretch. Still, I’m fairly confident many of these issues haven’t changed so much that the lessons of the story aren’t relevant today.
Summary: As ambassador to Romania shortly after the end of Communist rule, Jim Rosapepe worked hard to help the country shed the image of an old, dark, haunted place and bring Romania into the 20th century and all that implies. His wife, Sheila, used her skills as a journalist to work with the Romanian people to make the transition possible. In this book, Sheila and Jim chronicle their time in Romania by taking the reader through each of Romania’s eight regions and the changes that have helped shape the country.
I had a rocky start with The Braindead Megaphone by George Saunders. Our reading relationship only got past the cover and first essay because I’d committed to read the book for outside reasons. However, I’m so glad I stuck it out because I ended up enjoying the book. Saunder’s collection of essays presents smart and [...]
Michael Lewis’ book Liar’s Poker is a piece that gets mentioned pretty often in discussions about literary and participatory journalism. Written in 1989, the book is about Lewis’ experiences right out of college as a bond salesman on Wall Street during the 1980s. The book was supposed to be a cautionary tale about excess greed [...]
