Yale history professor Kunzel (Criminal Intimacy) incisively probes the relationship between psychiatry and queerness in the U.S., from the birth of psychoanalysis in the 19th century to the 1973 removal of homosexuality as a disorder from the DSM and beyond. Kunzel traces how mid-20th-century American psychiatrists fashioned an “optimistic” view of homosexuality as “curable” (partly as a result of “postwar American confidence”), while European “pessimism” tended to frame homosexuality as innate. She further theorizes that the postwar fixation on homosexuality as a threat to “American values” helped elevate psychiatrists’ status, as they became experts on so-called “problems of everyday life.” Anchoring her work in the case files of Washington, D.C., psychiatrist Dr. Benjamin Karpman, who from the 1920s through the 1950s insisted his patients record their lives in letters and journals, Kunzel mixes nuanced historical analysis with a revealing window into the experiences of those being treated, including their resistance to narratives of homosexuality and gender variance as conditions to be fixed. (“I like this freedom of being able to have love with a beautiful, talented, brilliant, strong, and accomplished woman,” one female patient wrote to Karpman in the 1940s. “Can this not be my cure, instead of making me normal?”) The result is a valuable history of the pain and confusion caused by attempts to pathologize sexual differences. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

Activist Cruz aims in their uplifting if uneven debut to “amplify joy and affirm it as a form of resistance” in the Black community. Inspired by the author’s eponymous organization, the collection presents eye-catching photography, paintings, and mixed media pieces from artists around the world alongside Cruz’s meditations on Black joy as a “restorative, regenerative, and generous force” that “coexists with our baggage and our hurt” even as it carves out space for imagining a better world. There’s no shortage of insight in Cruz’s passionate discussions of how TikTok can unite communities and “foster Black joy across age and class lines” and Afro-Brazilian grassroots movements that protest police violence in favelas. Unfortunately, the prose suffers from awkward phrasing and strained metaphors, as when Cruz compares the adaptability of Black culinary traditions to moss (“Our continued practices of cooking are like those colonies of stalks that make up the thousand of varieties of moss that exist on this planet.... And we know that in the moment that we may not have what we need to create the dishes we desire, we will innovate, holding out like the stalks in freezing conditions until we can get access to those missing ingredients”), and the stunning images don’t always connect to the surrounding text. Still, this is a captivating celebration of Black resilience and resistance. Photos. Agent: Marya Spence, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 01/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this uneven survey, Janjuha-Jivraj (Futureproof Your Career), Corboz, and Mourot-Haxaire, who are all professors at the HEC Paris business school, draw on interviews with more than 1,000 women from across the world to emphasize the importance of the “seven Cs” for career success: creativity, compass (values), courage, connections, championing (receiving support from mentors), curating your team, and career (integrating the other factors). The interviewees’ stories are mostly presented in their own words; for instance, Netflix executive Whitney Gore discusses how the streaming company encourages “fresh thinking” by soliciting “contrary views” that “strengthen the quality of the discussion and rigour of ideas.” Elsewhere, Aminata Kane, an executive at Orange Bank Africa, stresses the importance of keeping cool under pressure, and Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, a former U.N. executive from Saudi Arabia, tells how she led with compassion by seeking out the perspectives of the people she served. Unfortunately, scant specifics in some of the stories muddle the takeaway. For instance, the authors praise Djibouti diplomat Amina Mohamed’s outside-the-box thinking in implementing U.N. sustainability goals, but it’s not clear what her ideas were or what problem she solved. Still, the diversity of perspectives makes this worth a look. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this ho-hum study, Parke, an editor at True West, expounds on the history and appeal of film and TV westerns. Among other insights, Parke details how director John Ford transformed John Wayne from a B-lister into a star with the 1939 film Stagecoach and how screenwriter William Goldman researched and wrote the first drafts of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid while teaching at Princeton University in the 1950s. Much of the volume repurposes Parke’s articles for True West, and their various forms can make this feel like a hodgepodge. For instance, a section on film actors includes profiles of Kevin Costner and Tom Selleck, obituaries of Sam Shepherd and Powers Boothe, and an interview with Robert Duvall. The films, shows, and actors highlighted provide an incomprehensive overview of the genre, with numerous pages devoted to the little-watched AMC show The Son (2017–2019), while Clint Eastwood’s collaborations with Sergio Leone are almost entirely overlooked. Nonetheless, the attention paid to relatively minor works does yield some gems, as when Return to Lonesome Dove screenwriter John Wilder discusses how the best westerns “are about right and wrong, meeting challenges, [and] maintaining integrity and honor.” This works better as a collection of musings than a primer on the genre. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

Australian essayist Olds debuts with a striking collection loosely focused on how people respond to economic precarity and dream up better futures. In “For Discussion and Resolution,” Olds weaves the history of utopian, polyamorous experiments into an account of her own polyamorous relationship. She explains that free love communes stretching back to 19th-century French philosopher Charles Fourier, who envisioned communities with rotating partners and jobs, believed that sex, like other forms of labor, should be distributed equitably among members. Just as those experiments struggled to live up to their founding principles, Olds notes that her own commitment to polyamory was challenged after her partner fell in love with another woman, but she maintains that “it’s always possible, of course, that both monogamy and polyamory are deeply unnatural.” Olds has a talent for probing the ironies of late capitalism, exploring in “Crypto Forever” how digital currencies appeal both to those who feel marginalized by traditional markets (such as the sex worker and the money-strapped PhD student she profiles) and those who think crypto is capitalism’s “next leap forward.” Elsewhere, Olds reflects on clubbing as a type of labor and argues that the hybrid essay is “a form that preserves and reproduces tradition... while pretending to annul it.” Olds’s idiosyncratic perspective consistently surprises, and she elegantly blends cultural, historical, and class analysis into an easy to digest whole. This is a pleasure. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s efforts to become the new Donald Trump have set him at daggers drawn with the old one, according to this rollicking debut study of cutthroat Republican politics. NBC News reporter Dixon recounts DeSantis’s career as a Republican congressman and his 2018 election to the governor’s office thanks in part to an eagerly sought endorsement from Trump. Much of the book explores DeSantis’s subsequent courting of Trump’s MAGA base with right-wing populist initiatives in Florida. For example, he largely eschewed Covid public safety measures, and championed laws that banned or cracked down on drag shows, gender-affirming care for youth, and schools teaching LGBTQ issues or material that makes students “feel guilt” about the past. These policies, and his triumphant 2022 reelection, made DeSantis a Republican star and initially Trump’s chief rival for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Dixon narrates a lively blow-by-blow of that battle to date, with Trump landing most of the blows—including false allegations of sexual improprieties and the coining of the nickname “Meatball Ron.” In Dixon’s well-observed and cutting assessment, DeSantis is “a charmless battering ram” with a “nasally, whiny” voice and a “weird” demeanor. It’s a shrewd and entertaining portrait of MAGA Republicanism. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 01/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this raw debut memoir, essayist Rensin interweaves an account of his struggles with schizoaffective bipolar disorder with a cutting examination of American attitudes toward mental health. Most chapters are rooted in Rensin’s own experiences, describing, for example, the year he visited four different psychiatrists, his various periods of institutionalization, and his experiments with going off such medications as Seroquel and Abilify. Rensin expounds on these episodes with incisive critiques of the way Americans discuss mental illness, pulling in sources ranging from Roman history and ancient Chinese medicine to track shifting attitudes toward mental health across several centuries. Provocative ideas abound, including Rensin’s argument that the current tendency to reduce stigma around mental illness undermines meaningful discussions of the actual experiences of mental illnesses: “Everywhere, the shame and embarrassment and stigma of lunacy is held up like a scarecrow, while every actual discussion of madness insists that it is trying to liberate us from that straw man’s repressive gaze.” Such strident takes might alienate some readers, but Rensin’s points are trenchant and well argued, and the harrowing details of his own struggles lend him credibility. While the unremitting darkness can be tough to stomach, it’s a rousing rebuke to more placid treatments of similar subject matter. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

This mind-bending memoir from Canadian poet Barnes (Braille Rainbow) pivots on the author’s life-altering psychotic break when he was 22. While trudging through his freshman year of college in “a waking dream,” Barnes grew certain that he was headed toward the breakdown that eventually came several years later. He took long walks at three in the morning, hoping to find relief from the sense of impending doom; in the daytime, he showed up for classes and earned mediocre grades, but retained almost no memories of his attendance. Following periods of deep depression and depersonalization, Barnes sought help from various psychologists and counselors—sessions he recounts in surreal, frequently humorous detail—each of whom offered their own unhelpful analysis. He also took trips to the Dachau concentration camp and other locations in hopes of eliciting the kinds of deep emotions that might crack him open, though he remained unstirred. The volume’s particular magic lies in Barnes’s adept use of free-flowing chronology and hallucinatory language to immerse readers in the depths of his psychosis (during his breakdown, he describes seeing “a flattened, sky-wide frieze of huge geometrical forms, rectangles of electric blue and rhomboids of liquid gold and chocolate brown”). This isn’t easy to forget. Photos. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 01/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

Fighting is vital to healthy relationships, yet few couples know how to engage in it meaningfully, according to this persuasive and plainspoken guide. The Gottmans (The Love Prescription), psychologists and married cofounders of the Gottman Institute, an organization that studies marriage and relationships, seek to help readers use fights to “figure out who we are, what we want, who our partners are and who they are becoming.” In jargon-free prose, they outline three conflict styles—“avoiding, validating and volatile”—and discuss how couples can handle similarities or differences in their styles, including by seeking to understand the roots of the other’s approach to conflict (someone who grew up in a family where arguments led to a parent walking out, for example, might later become an “avoider”). Elsewhere, the authors break down disputes into five categories, among them the Bomb Drop (a fight that begins aggressively and is difficult to turn around) and the Shallows (in which couples “skim the surface” instead of getting at the real issue). The Gottmans’ key principles for fighting fair include compromising when possible and articulating a need in positive rather than negative terms (“Can we sit down together and plan how to cut some of our expenses?” rather than “You overspent again!”). While some of the advice is common sense—most couples will know they’re meant to be good listeners or focus on one issue during a conflict, even if that’s easier said than done—much is novel, and the Gottmans’ easy-to-remember tips (“Start softly, even if you’re upset”) will be especially useful in moments of heightened emotion. This is a valuable resource. Agent: Doug Abrams, Idea Architects. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 01/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

Ben-Moshe (Laughing at Cancer), an adjunct lecturer in positive psychology at La Trobe University, sets out to prove in this cheery if disjointed outing that laughter can indeed be the best medicine. Battling chronic fatigue syndrome in her 20s, the author stumbled across “laughter yoga” (which combines deep breathing, clapping, ”chanting ho ho, ha, ha, ha” and “simulated laughter exercises”) at a health conference. She experienced “immediate” relief, and promptly began studying to become a laughter yoga leader. Writing that laughter switches off the body’s fight-or-flight response and activates beta endorphins, the body’s “internal source of morphine,” Ben-Moshe explains that simply going to a comedy show or practicing laughter yoga can reduce pain and alleviate gastrointestinal symptoms. Elsewhere, she cites a study suggesting women who spent 15 minutes with a clown after an IVF procedure were more likely to have a successful implantation than those who didn’t. (Couples looking to conceive would do well to “enjoy a productive laugh” together, Ben-Moshe writes; while the evidence isn’t incontrovertible, “worst-case scenario: you’ll have a laugh. Best-case scenario: you’ll have a life!”). Though the guidance is somewhat disorganized (scientific research and personal anecdote mix with self-help exercises such as writing a “gratitude letter to yourself” and bits of advice from a “Serotonin Sister—an upbeat incarnation of Dear Abby”), Ben-Moshe’s relentlessly upbeat tone is hard to resist. This energetic testament to the power of levity has its moments. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/05/2024 | Details & Permalink