Synopsis:
A look at the every day manifestations of sociopathy.
Review:
The Sociopath Next Door was informative but I wanted more case studies. The audiobook was deeply discounted and kept me mostly engaged.
Synopsis:
An overview of the recent phenomenon of marriages that end before they reach the five-year mark.
Review:
I hate books that never tell you more than what you read in the title. I generally enjoy books like this, as I’m keenly interested in human behavior and social trends, but this book really didn’t do it for me. I never felt like Paul’s interviewees came alive, and as a result I wasn’t sucked into the drama of their lives. I gave up on it 2/3 of the way through because I just do not have the time to spend with a book I don’t like right now.
Synopsis:
A dissection of hook-up culture on college campuses and in high schools, including anecdotal accounts.
Review:
More hand-wringing than Last Night in Paradise, less high-minded than Unprotected, Unhooked is more likely than either to provoke fear and consternation in the hearts of parents of teenagers across America–particularly if they’ve read I Am Charlotte Simmons and their daughter is looking at Duke University. Continue reading
Synopsis:
A look at sexual mores in the age of AIDS.
Review:
I like a good polemic as much as the next person, particularly when it involves people having lots of sex, mostly because I always feel like that’s nice work if you can get it. Last Night in Paradise isn’t hard-hitting investigative journalism as much as it’s an apologia for all the sex that Roiphe and her friends had in the 80s and 90s: “look, we may have slept around but we are always scared we got AIDS, so that doesn’t make us sleazy like swingers in the 1970s.” Roiphe herself calls this a kind of Puritanism, yet she succumbs to it in almost every chapter, talking about how she herself worries that she’s slept with too many people, or wondering whether or not she and her friends can handle the emotional ramifications of all that “safer sex.” She never quite seems to leave the Upper East Side private school world that she herself came from, and tends to see her experiences as representative of the general population. Her astonishment that anyone would voluntarily choose abstinence belies her inability to consider that there are other perspectives on sex than her own. Continue reading
Synopsis:
An investigation into cosmetic surgery, mainly in America, with a focus on the extremes to which people have gone. Continue reading
Synopsis:
An overview of the “giftedness complex,” from Baby Einstein to kid Scrabble tournaments. Continue reading
Synopsis:
An essay-driven look at various crises facing American men. Continue reading
Synopsis:
Judith Wallerstein began a long-term study of the effects of divorce on children 25 years ago, and this book presents a portrait of the history and present of 5 children of divorce, and 5 who lived in families with similar dynamics where the parents did not divorce. Continue reading
