Inspiring stories of women, and some men, who exemplify principles of modern leadership.
Alepin and Key both have extensive experience studying and teaching leadership as well as heading organizations themselves, including the education program Women Leaders for the World, and it shows. Together, they share their wisdom in an intriguing blend of business book and self-help guide. The text is organized thematically into six parts; each comprises three or four stories of women—such as Mary Burns, the co-founder of the Kasimu Education Fund in Malawi, and Diti Mookherjee, the CEO of the Association for Social and Environmental Development in India—with a few stories of men interspersed. All took part in the WLW program, and many rose to much larger accomplishments than they’d ever dreamed. The leaders profiled are shown to be making impressive strides to address crucial social issues—involving environmental stewardship, poverty, sex trafficking, education, and healthcare, and other things—in Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Mexico, and Nepal, as well as the United States. Each chapter ends with “Appreciative Inquiry Questions to Ponder,” presented in a “four Ds” format that aims to “Discover” the best of what is, “Dream” of what might be, “Design” what should be, and “Deliver” what will be by taking a simple step towards the goal. Readers will likely find the format and the questions to be useful as they aim to forge their own paths as leaders. A brief concluding section, “The Never-Ending Journey to Becoming,” sums up key concepts. Although the primary focus is on leadership for women, readers of any gender will find a wealth of useful ideas in these pages. The work differs from other, similar advice books by focusing on listening and questioning, on community-building, and on self-confidence and self-compassion. The co-authors’ use of the pronoun I with parentheticals (“I (Linda) founded a nonprofit…”; “I (Barbara) attended a one-day seminar…”) sometimes feels odd, and their occasional use of the term sheroes is awkward. Overall, though, their candid, personal tone helps to reinforce their message about what it takes to be a truly effective leader.
An earnest and engaging leadership manual.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 154
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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The acclaimed author and translator offers thoughts on the latter art and craft.
A Pulitzer Prize–winning author of fiction in English, Lahiri moved to Rome in 2012 to immerse herself in Italian. Since then, she has published both a memoir and fiction in Italian and translated several works from Italian to English. This volume collects several pieces written over the past seven years—her translators’ notes to the novels Ties (2017), Trick (2018), and Trust (2021) by Italian writer (and friend) Domenico Starnone; stand-alone essays; and lectures and addresses—as well as an original introduction and afterword. A few themes emerge: Lahiri frequently returns to Ovid and Metamorphoses, most notably in her lecture “In Praise of Echo” and her moving afterword, which recounts her process of translating Ovid as her mother declined and died; metaphors of immigration and migration—Lahiri is both the daughter of Bengali-speaking Indian immigrants and an immigrant herself, twice over—ground other musings. Possibly the most provocative piece is “Where I Find Myself”—on the process of translating her own novel Dove mi trovo, from the original Italian into English as Whereabouts (2021)—an essay that finds her first questioning the ethics of self-translation (probed with a surgical metaphor) and then impelled to make revisions for a second Italian edition. The weakest essay is “Traduzione (stra)ordinaria / (Extra)ordinary Translation,” an appreciation of Italian revolutionary and thinker Antonio Gramsci, whose Letters From Prison reveal a linguist as ferociously compelled to investigate the process of translation as Lahiri herself. Composed originally as remarks for a panel, it reads like an elegantly annotated list of bullet points that will have readers wishing Lahiri had revised it into a cohesive essay. Readers may also find themselves envious of the author’s students of translation at Princeton, but this sharp collection will have to do. Two essays originally composed in Italian are printed in the original in an appendix.
A scrupulously honest and consistently thoughtful love letter to “the most intense form of reading…there is.”Pub Date: May 17, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-691-23116-7
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2022
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PERSPECTIVES
Incisive look at the destructive path of anti-abortion ideology in the U.S.
Even though most Americans believe in a woman’s right to choose—“consistent research has shown that more than 7 in 10 Americans support legal access to abortion”—the radical right has succeeded in steadily eroding reproductive freedoms since Roe v. Wade. According to NARAL Pro-Choice America leaders Hogue and Langford, the campaign against abortion is but a means to an end for the architects of the pro-life movement. Their true aim is the uncontested dominion of White Christian men. The battle began in 1954, when Brown v. Board of Education struck down “state laws used by segregationists to maintain structural inequality in the nation’s schools.” In 1976, the IRS rescinded the tax-exempt status of the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s segregationist Bob Jones University. What has followed, argue the authors convincingly, is more than a half-century of machinations designed “to halt progressive cultural change and maintain power for a privileged minority.” Anti-abortion rhetoric is just a weapon, driven by design, propaganda, disinformation, and cowed Republican politicians—hallmarks of the Trump era. Hogue and Langdon make a strong case that the rises of Trump, fake news, and science skepticism are not flukes but rather the culmination of a dogged campaign by forces still smarting from desegregation and second- and third-wave feminism. The reproductive freedom of American women is the victim of an “anti-democratic power grab on a historic scale.” The authors build a chilling case that the startling 2019 wave of abortion bans across the nation should serve as a canary in the coal mine for citizens concerned with democracy and a catalyst for bolder messaging, better strategic planning, and sustained action to combat disinformation.
A cogent “horror story” about the plot to reanimate mid-20th-century White male supremacy at the expense of abortion access.Pub Date: July 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-947492-50-9
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Strong Arm Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2020
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