Lean, harsh and lowdown, this bruising history leaves a mark.
The gripping history of a largely forgotten legend of wrestling.
Washington Post managing editor Leen (co-author: Kings of Cocaine: Inside the Medellin Cartel, 1989) illuminates the murky history of women’s professional wrestling with this sympathetic biography of Mildred Burke, the sport’s greatest champion. Burke (née Bliss) grew up in poverty and seemed resigned to a life in the margins, waitressing in a dingy café during the depths of the Depression—until her husband took her to a wrestling match. Something about the primal nature of the contest touched a chord in the unhappy young woman, and Burke wholly dedicated herself to a professional grappling. Her career began in earnest when she tried out for Billy Wolfe, a former wrestler who had begun to gather and train young women in the sport. Wolfe quickly realized her potential—she was lithe, strong, gifted with an innate sense of balance and fiercely determined—and she began to win matches, defeating some 200 men before establishing herself as the nation’s premier woman wrestler, holding the world championship for nearly 20 years. Wolfe is both the book’s villain and most compelling character, a cigar-chomping, diamond-flashing huckster whose genius for promotion and utter ruthlessness paid off in spectacular success. He was also an abusive womanizer, blithely cheating on Burke—whom he had married, presumably to better control her fortunes—with the young women in his charge, who understood that sex with him was the only route to success in their field. Burke remains a bit of a cipher, a mulish survivor abused by Wolfe for years before he effectively destroyed her career, abetted by the sexist mentality of the wrestling establishment. Equally tragic, and not a bit tawdry, was Burke’s long-term affair with Wolfe’s son, who would ultimately take part in her fall. Burke enjoyed a twilight resurgence when touring lady wrestlers proved popular in Japan, but the impression Leen provides is of a broken, badly used woman who ironically stands as a symbol of feminine strength and a groundbreaking figure in the history of women’s athletics.
Lean, harsh and lowdown, this bruising history leaves a mark.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-8021-1882-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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
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