“The British psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott began an autobiography that he never finished. The first paragraph simply says, ‘I died.’ In the fifth paragraph he writes, ‘Let me see. What was happening when I died? My prayer had been... Read More
Igniting the masses in conflict, the emergence of cremation as a death rite has consumed the last century of American history in flames of debate and plumes of literary metaphor. Yet, with growing acceptance of cremation, the rigid... Read More
Fanon probably doesn’t belong in the same pantheon as Christ or Gandhi, as Ehlen alludes to in the opening chapter of his book. The man and his ideas, however, certainly deserve more consideration than they are accorded today. Fanon, a... Read More
Holt takes on a huge task in a slim volume, attempting to place the conundrum of race in the context of a new century. Starting with the natural jumping-off point of W. E. B. DuBois’ prediction (1903) that the problem of the twentieth... Read More
“Very well then—he would travel. Not all that far, not quite to where the tigers were.” This quote from Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice might describe Meredith, except that he has traveled far indeed—from the United States to... Read More
For Walter Hirsch, escaping Hitler’s wrath was more adventure than vital necessity. Hirsch, a young Jewish boy in 1933 Stuttgart, had “always wanted to go to America…always wanted to be a cowboy.” His dream of traveling across... Read More
From the introduction in his work on fraud and fakery in the health care profession, Whitlock makes it clear that he has a very particular ax to grind. He put the book together to urge consumers to actively participate in their own... Read More
This narrative requires the reader to suspend disbelief. Meg, a victim of sexual abuse by her stepfather from early childhood into her twenties, abetted by her mother, has written a dramatic, convincing story with the help of Mackey, a... Read More