A Deadly Wandering: A Tale of Tragedy and Redemption in the Age of Attention
Matt Richtel, 2014
HarperCollins
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062284075
Summary
A brilliant, narrative-driven exploration of technology’s vast influence on the human mind and society, dramatically-told through the lens of a tragic “texting-while-driving” car crash that claimed the lives of two rocket scientists in 2006.
In this ambitious, compelling, and beautifully written book, Matt Richtel, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times, examines the impact of technology on our lives through the story of Utah college student Reggie Shaw, who killed two scientists while texting and driving. Richtel follows Reggie through the tragedy, the police investigation, his prosecution, and ultimately, his redemption.
In the wake of his experience, Reggie has become a leading advocate against “distracted driving.” Richtel interweaves Reggie’s story with cutting-edge scientific findings regarding human attention and the impact of technology on our brains, proposing solid, practical, and actionable solutions to help manage this crisis individually and as a society.
A propulsive read filled with fascinating, accessible detail, riveting narrative tension, and emotional depth, A Deadly Wandering explores one of the biggest questions of our time—what is all of our technology doing to us?—and provides unsettling and important answers and information we all need. (From .)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 2, 1966
• Where—Los Angeles, California, USA
• Education—B.A., University of California, Berkeley; M.S. Columbia University
• Awards—Pulitizer Prize
• Currently—lives in San Francisco, California
Matt Richtel is an American writer and journalist. He was born in Los Angeles, California, and obtained a bachelor's degree from the University of California at Berkeley and an M.S. from the Columbia School of Journalism.
As a writer for the New York Times, he won a 2010 Pulitizer for his 2009-2010 series on distracted driving—"Driving to Distraction."
He is also the author of the 2014 nonfiction book A Deadly Wandering: A Tale of Tragedy and Redemption in the Age of Attention, which intertwines the story of a car crash caused by a texting driver with a study of the science of attention. The book became a New York Times bestseller and Editor's Choice. It was named one of the best books the year by Kirkus Reviews, Christian Science Monitor, San Francisco Chronicle, Amazon, and others.
Richtel has also authored several mystery/thrillers, including Doomsday Equation (2015), The Cloud (2013) and The Devil's Plaything (2011). His first book Hooked (2007) is about a reporter whose life is turned upside down when he escapes a cafe explosion.
He created and formerly wrote the syndicated comic series Rudy Park under the penname Theron Heir. The strip is now written by its longtime illustrator Darrin Bell.
Richtel lives in San Francisco with his wife, son and daughter. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/21/2015.)
Book Reviews
Matt Richtel’s riveting book is narrative nonfiction at its finest.... This book should be placed in every school and legislative chamber in the country.
Jon Huntsman, former governor of Utah
Americans are addicted to their technology, putting us on a modern day collision course with very real consequences. Matt Richtel brilliantly tells the story of the aftermath of a deadly distracted driving crash. His portrait is riveting. I could not stop reading, and neither will you.
Ray LaHood, former U.S. Secretary of Transportation
Richtel gives Shaw's story the thorough, emotional treatment it is due, interweaving a detailed chronicle of the science behind distracted driving. As an instructive social parable, Richtel's densely reported…compassionate and persuasive book deserves a spot next to Fast Food Nation and To Kill a Mockingbird in America's high school curriculums. To say it may save lives is self-evident…Richtel displays admirable empathy for everyone involved but reserves a special place in his heart for Reggie—impassive and forlorn, monosyllabic but tortured, evasive yet sincere. Shaw's conversion is depicted with revelatory precision, his epiphany realistically subdued and painstakingly gradual (An Editor's Choice).
Robert Kolker - New York Times Book Review
Keen and elegantly raw.... Not just a morality tale but a probe sent into the world of technology.... Richtel draws all the characters with a fine brush, a delicacy that treats misery both respectfully and front-on (One of the 10 Best Nonfiction Books of the Year).
Christian Science Monitor.
Each page is... irresistible.... A richly detailed and compellingly readable exploration of the "clash" between our brains and the electronic devices that, for many of us, have become essential to "every facet of life."
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Exhaustively researched.... Richtel brings a novelist’s knack for unspooling narrative conflict to bear on Shaw’s real-life drama (A Best Book of the Year).
San Francisco Chronicle
Intensely gripping, compelling, and sobering... A Deadly Wandering gives the potentially lethal risks of the digital age a very human face—one which we can, if we’re honest, readily see in the mirror (A Best Book of the Year).
Winnipeg Free Press
A deadly driving-while-texting car crash illuminates the perils of information overload.... The author’s determination to juice up the science with human interest...feels overdone.... Still...he raises fascinating and troubling issues about the cognitive impact of our technology.
Publishers Weekly
[T]he story of Utah teenager Reggie Shaw, who caused a fatal accident as he texted while driving.... [A] highly accessible and timely work. Readers of popular narrative and scientific nonfiction will certainly find this to be a brisk and important read. —Ben Neal, Richland Lib., Columbia, SC
Library Journal
(Starred review.) A novelist and Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter explores with nearly Javert-ian persistenceone of the early cases of traffic fatalities caused by texting while driving.... Comprehensive research underlies this compelling, highly emotional and profoundly important story (A Best Book of the Year).
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for A Deadly Wandering:
1. Should reading A Deadly Wandering be compulsory in schools across the country as former Governor Jon Huntsman of Utah has said (see book reviews above)?
2. In what way does the author suggest that Reggie Shaw's upbringing played a role in the accident? What about Reggie's family—what role did it play, especially in the immediate aftermath of the crash?
3. Talk about the arc of Reggie Shaw's redemption. He was reluctant at first to admit fault, let alone apologize; what happened to set him on his new path? Can you put yourself in Reggie's shoes? What would it feel like to have caused such devastation for something so trivial?
4. Talk about the scientific findings Matt Richtel presents in his book, especially the evidence that adolescent brains are different from adult brains. In what ways do they differ?
5. Does the author do a good job of leading readers through the science and helping us find answers? Did reading about the many neuroscientific theories and studies, and hearing from numerous scientists, make it difficult to determine which research is more important? Or were you able to arrive at your own assessment?
6. And then there's dopamine...always dopamine. Explain!
7. Discuss the two differing types of attention: top down and bottom up.
8. Richtel suggests that we're distracted because we wish to be. Do you agree? What are your own proclivities for distraction—how easy is it for you to lose yourself in thoughts rather than pay attention to the moment at hand.
9. What about smart phones—how have they added to our already overburdened attention spans? Richtel presents several analogies as a way to explain our attraction to phones and texting—alcohol, drugs, television, video games, slot machines, junk food, and a tap on the shoulder. Which one, if any, do you find most apt?
10. What parts of A Deadly Wandering do you find most powerful and moving?
11. Do you think this book will save lives?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online of off, with attribution. Thanks.)
On Immunity: An Inoculation
Eula Bliss, 2014
Graywolf Press
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781555977207
Summary
In this bold, fascinating book, Eula Biss addresses our fear of the government, the medical establishment, and what may be in our children's air, food, mattresses, medicines, and vaccines.
Reflecting on her own experience as a new mother, she suggests that we cannot immunize our children, or ourselves, against the world.
As she explores the metaphors surrounding immunity, Biss extends her conversations with other mothers to meditations on the myth of Achilles, Voltaire's Candide, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Susan Sontag's AIDS and Its Metaphors, and beyond.
On Immunity is an inoculation against our fear and a moving account of how we are all interconnected-our bodies and our fates. (From publishers.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1977-78
• Raised—upstate New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Hampshire College; M.F.A., University of Iowa
• Awards—National Book Critics Circle Award; Pushcart Prize; Carl Sandberg Award
• Currently—lives in Evanston, Illinois
Eula Biss is an American non-fiction writer and the founder of Essay Press where she is also an editor. She teaches, as an artist in residence, at Northwestern University.
Personal
Rasied in upstate New York, Biss earned a bachelor's degree in non-fiction writing from Hampshire College in western Massachusetts. After graduation, she moved to New York City, teaching in public schools—an experience that profoundly influenced her writing. In 2003, she moved to Iowa City to complete her MFA in the University of Iowa's Nonfiction Writing Program. She teaches at Northwestern University.
She and her husband John Bresland live with their son in Evanston, Illinois. She and Bresland are also in a band called STET Everything.
Writing
Biss published her first book Balloonist, a collection of prose poems, in 2002. Notes from No Man's Land: American Essays, her second book, came out in 2009, winning the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. She published her third book On Immunity: An Inoculation in 2014. It was named one of the New York Times Book Review's "10 Best Books of 2014" and was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Biss won the Carl Sandburg Literary Award, the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award, the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize, the Pushcart Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is a Guggenheim Fellow. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/20/2015.)
Book Reviews
On Immunity casts a spell.... There's drama in watching this smart writer feel her way through this material. She's a poet, an essayist and a class spy. She digs honestly into her own psyche and into those of "people like me," and she reveals herself as believer and apostate, moth and flame.
Dwight Garner - New York Times
Subtle, spellbinding.... Sontag said she wrote Illness as Metaphor to "calm the imagination, not to incite it," and On Immunity also seeks to cool and console...[Biss] advances from all sides, like a chess player, drawing on science, myth, literature to herd us to the only logical end, to vaccinate
Parul Sehgal - New York Times Book Review
A welcome antidote--or "inoculation," as the subtitle suggests--against the toxic shouting match occurring between 'anti-vaxxers' and their opponents.... Biss leaps nimbly through a vertiginous range of subjects.... Brilliant and entertaining.
Boston Globe
A philosophical look at the history and practice of vaccination that reads like Joan Didion at her best. If you are yourself a nonfiction author, your initial response to this book might be to decide immediately on another line of work; Biss is that intimidatingly talented.... This is cultural commentary at its highest level, a searching examination of the most profound issues of health, identity and the tensions between individual parenting decisions and society.
Washington Post
By exploring the anxieties about what's lurking inside our flu shots, the air, and ourselves, [Biss] drives home the message that we are all responsible for one another. On Immunity will make you consider that idea on a fairly profound level.
Entertainment Weekly
On Immunity...weaves metaphor and myth, science and sociology, philosophy and politics into a tapestry rich with insight and intelligence.
Jerome Groopman - New York Review of Books
[An] elegant, intelligent and very beautiful book, which occupies a space between research and reflection, investigating our attitudes toward immunity and inoculation through a personal and cultural lens.
Los Angeles Times
Biss's gracious rhetoric and her insistence that she feels "uncomfortable with both sides" of the rancorous fight may frustrate readers looking for a pro-vaccine polemic. Yet her approach might actually be more likely to sway fearful parents, offering them an alternative set of images and associations to use in thinking about immunization.... Compelling.... This is writing designed to conquer anxiety.
The New Yorker
Biss advocates eloquently for childhood immunization...and understanding the consequences. Her exploration is both historical and emotional.... Biss frankly and optimistically looks at our "unkempt" world and our shared mission to protect one another.
Publishers Weekly
[A] far-reaching and unusual investigation into immunity.... Artfully mixing motherhood, myth, maladies, and metaphors into her presentation, Biss transcends medical science and trepidation
Booklist
National Book Critics Circle Award winner Biss investigates the nature of vaccinations, from immunity as myth to the intricate web of the immune system.... Brightly informative, giving readers a sturdy platform from which to conduct their own research and take personal responsibility.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for On Immunity:
1. One of the big questions dealt with in Biss's On Immunity is why vaccinations trigger fear and dread in many. To what does the author attribute this anxiety?
2. The author writes, "My son’s birth brought with it an exaggerated sense of both my own power and my own powerlessness. The world became suddenly forbidding." What specifically does Biss fear? Do you relate to those concerns--or do you feel they're an over-exaggeration?
3. What are your personal views on childhood vaccinations? Does Biss make a convincing case—logically, morally, and/or scientifically—in support of vaccinating infants and children? If so, what did you find most convincing?
—> On the other hand, if you remain unconvinced about the safety and efficacy of childhood vaccines, in what way did Biss fail to convince you? Where do you disagree with her? Better yet, where does her evidence fall short?
4. Much has been made of Biss's conciliatory language and the overall tone she uses throughout the book. Reviewers speak of her kindness, calmness, even her complicity as a mother. Point to some of the words and phrases she uses to de-escalate the potential for anger.
5. Bliss writes that "a privileged 1 percent are sheltered from risk while they draw resources from the other 99 percent." What does she mean by that?
6. Biss believes that "from birth onward, our bodies are a shared space." Do you agree...or not? Either way, where do our responsibilities lie—for ourselves, as well as for others?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Why Not Me?
Mindy Kaling, 2015
Crown/Archetype
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780804138147
Summary
A collection of essays that are as hilarious and insightful as they are deeply personal.
In Why Not Me?, Kaling shares her ongoing journey to find contentment and excitement in her adult life, whether it’s
... falling in love at work
... seeking new friendships in lonely places
... attempting to be the first person in history to lose
weight without any behavior modification whatsoever
... or most important, believing that you have a place in
Hollywood when you’re constantly reminded that no one looks like you.
In “How to Look Spectacular: A Starlet’s Confessions,” Kaling gives her tongue-in-cheek secrets for surefire on-camera beauty, (“Your natural hair color may be appropriate for your skin tone, but this isn’t the land of appropriate–this is Hollywood, baby. Out here, a dark-skinned woman’s traditional hair color is honey blonde.”) “Player” tells the story of Kaling being seduced and dumped by a female friend in L.A. (“I had been replaced by a younger model. And now they had matching bangs.”) In “Unlikely Leading Lady,” she muses on America’s fixation with the weight of actresses, (“Most women we see onscreen are either so thin that they’re walking clavicles or so huge that their only scenes involve them breaking furniture.”) And in “Soup Snakes,” Kaling spills some secrets on her relationship with her ex-boyfriend and close friend, B.J. Novak (“I will freely admit: my relationship with B.J. Novak is weird as hell.”)
Mindy turns the anxieties, the glamour, and the celebrations of her second coming-of-age into a laugh-out-loud funny collection of essays that anyone who’s ever been at a turning point in their life or career can relate to.
And those who’ve never been at a turning point can skip to the parts where she talks about meeting Bradley Cooper. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 24, 1979
• Where—Cambridge, Massachesetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Darthmouth College
• Awards—Emmy
• Currently—lives in West Hollywood, California
Vera Mindy Chokalingam, known professionally as Mindy Kaling, is an American actress, comedian, and writer. She is the creator and star of the Fox and Hulu sitcom The Mindy Project, and also serves as executive producer and writer for the show. She is also known for her work on the NBC sitcom The Office, where she portrayed the character Kelly Kapoor and served as executive producer, writer and director.
Her memoir Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concers) was published in 2011. Her second book, Why Not Me? was released in 2015. Both became top sellers.
Early life
Kaling was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to a Tamil father, Avu Chokalingam, an architect, and a Bengali mother, Dr. Swati Chokalingam (nee Roysircar), an obstetrician/gynecologist.
Both of Kaling's parents are Hindus from India, who met while working at the same hospital in Nigeria. Kaling's mother was working as an OBGYN, and her father was overseeing the building of a wing of the hospital. The family emigrated in 1979, the same year Kaling was born. Kaling's mother died of pancreatic cancer in 2012. Kaling has an older brother, anti-affirmative action activist Vijay Jojo Chokalingam.
Kaling graduated from Buckingham Browne & Nichols, a private school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1997. The following year, she entered Dartmouth College where she graduated with a B.A. in Playwriting.
While at Dartmouth, she was a member of the improvisational comedy troupe, The Dog Day Players, and the a cappella singers, The Rockapellas. She was creator of the comic strip Badly Drawn Girl in The Dartmouth (the college's daily newspaper), and a writer for the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern (the college's humor magazine). She was a Classics major for much of college, studying Latin, which she had not studied since 7th grade.
Career
While a 19-year-old sophomore at Dartmouth, Kaling was an intern on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. She described herself as a terrible intern, "less of a 'make copies' intern and more of a 'stalk Conan' intern."
After college, Kaling moved to Brooklyn and took what she said was one of her "worst job" experiences"—a production assistant for three months on the Crossing Over With John Edward psychic show. At the same time, Kaling did stand-up in New York City.
In August 2002, Kaling and Brenda Withers, a college friend, wrote an off=Broadway play called Matt & Ben, Kaling played Ben Afflect to Brenda Withers' Matt Damon. The play was named one of Time magazine's "Top Ten Theatrical Events of The Year" and was "a surprise hit" at the 2002 New York International Fringe Festival. The play reimagined how Damon and Affleck came to write the movie Good Will Hunting.
Kaling also wrote a popular blog called "Things I’ve Bought That I Love," which reemerged on her website on September 29, 2011. The blog was written under the name Mindy Ephron, "a name Kaling chose because she was amused by the idea of her 20-something Indian-American self as a long-lost Ephron sister."
The Office
When working in 2004 to adapt The Office from its BBC progenitor, producer Greg Daniels hired Kaling as a writer-performer after reading a spec script she wrote. Daniels called Kaling "very original," saying that "if anything feels phony or lazy or passé, she’ll pounce on it."
Kaling joined the The Office, as the only woman on a staff of eight. She was only 24. She took on the role of character Kelly Kapoor, debuting in "Diversity Day"—the series’ second episode. Since then she wrote at least 22 episodes, including "Niagara," for which she was co-nominated for an Emmy with Greg Daniels. Kaling both wrote and directed the webisode "Subtle Sexuality" in 2009.
In a 2007 interview with The A.V. Club, she stated that her character Kelly is "an exaggerated version of what I think the upper-level writers believe my personality is." After the "Diwali" episode, Kaling appeared with Daniels on NPR's Fresh Air.
Kaling's contract was set to expire at the end of Season 7. But in September, 2011, she signed a new contract to stay for Season 8; she was promoted to full Executive Producer status. Her Universal Television contract included a development deal for a new show (eventually titled The Mindy Project), in which she appears as an actor and contributes as a writer.
The Mindy Project
In 2012, Kaling pitched a single-camera comedy to Fox called The Mindy Project, which she wrote and produced. Fox began airing the series in 2012. Although canceled by Fox in May 2015, the series was later picked up by Hulu for a 26 episode fourth season.
Additional TV and film
Kaling's TV appearances include a 2005 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, playing Richard Lewis's assistant. She is featured on the CD Comedy Death-Ray and guest-wrote parts of an episode of Saturday Night Live in April 2006.
After her film debut in The 40-Year-Old Virgin with Steve Carell, Kaling appeared as a waitress in the film Unaccompanied Minors. In 2007 she held a small part in License to Wed starring fellow The Office actors John Krasinski, Angela Kinsey, and Brian Baumgartner.
She was also in the 2009 film Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian as a Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum tour guide and voiced Taffyta Muttonfudge in Disney's animated comedy film, Wreck-It Ralph. In 2011 she played the role of Shira, a doctor who is a roommate and colleague of the main character Emma (played by Natalie Portman) in No Strings Attached. Kaling also made an appearance as Vanetha in The Five-Year Engagement (2012). She also did voiced the role Disgust in the 2015 Pixar animated film, Inside Out.
Personal life
Kaling has said she has never been called Vera, her first name,[15] but has been referred to as Mindy since her mother was pregnant with her while her parents were living in Nigeria. They were already planning to move to the United States and wanted, Kaling said, a "cute American name" for their daughter, and liked the name Mindy from the TV show Mork & Mindy. The name Vera is, according to Kaling, the name of the "incarnation of a Hindu goddess."[15]
When Kaling started doing stand-up, the emcees could never pronounce her last name, Chokalingam, so they made fun of it. Eventually she changed it to Kaling. She stopped doing stand-up because it required a lot more time than she had. She toured solo as well as with Craig Robinson before he was on The Office.
Kaling has said that she never saw a family like hers on TV, which gave her a dual perspective she uses in her writing.[2] The "everyone against me mentality" is what she thinks she learned as a child of immigrants.[2] She loves reading books by Jhumpa Lahiri, even naming her Mindy Lahiri character after her.[29]
Kaling considers herself Hindu. She lives in West Hollywood, California. (From .)
Book Reviews
No online mainstream media reviews have been posted for this book yet. See Amazon for helpful customer reviews.
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for I?
1. Kaling has said elsewhere that the title has two meanings. One has to do with wondering why isn't she getting married like a number of her friends—it makes her feel left out. The second meaning has to do with her ambition: when someone succeeds in a certain endeavor, she wonders, "Why not me?" Talk about what those two meaning reveal about Mindy Kaling.
2. What does the chapter titled "For the Ladies: How to Look Spectacular, A Starlet's Confessions" say about Hollywood's obsession and ours (and yours?) with body shape and image? Does the media merely give us what we want: in other words, do we want celebrities to look unrealistically glamorous, like idealized versions of how we wished we looked? Or would we prefer stars to look more like us—everyday women and men?
3. In her discussion of friendships, Kaling talks about how hard it is to make female friends—it's more difficult than having sex. Is that difficulty a result of Kaling's fame and her hyper suspicious nature that she's being "played?" Or is it, perhaps, an common problem in the Hollywood environment? Have you ever had a friend like the one in "Player"?
4. Kaling says that she wants her readers to get the know the "real" Mindy Kaling. Did you come away after reading this book feeling that you DO know Mindy? How do you feel about her after reading Why Not Me?
5. Have you read her previous book Why is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (2011), and if so, how do the two books compare?
6. What parts of the book do you find especially funny or sad...or insightful or shallow? Do parts of the book resonate with your experiences or observances of life?
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
Primates of Park Avenue: A Memoir
Wednesday Martin, 2015
Simon & Schuster
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781476762623
Summary
Like an urban Dian Fossey, Wednesday Martin decodes the primate social behaviors of Upper East Side mothers in a brilliantly original and witty memoir about her adventures assimilating into that most secretive and elite tribe.
After marrying a man from the Upper East Side and moving to the neighborhood, Wednesday Martin struggled to fit in. Drawing on her background in anthropology and primatology, she tried looking at her new world through that lens, and suddenly things fell into place.
She understood the other mothers’ snobbiness at school drop-off when she compared them to olive baboons. Her obsessional quest for a Hermes Birkin handbag made sense when she realized other females wielded them to establish dominance in their troop. And so she analyzed tribal migration patterns; display rituals; physical adornment, mutilation, and mating practices; extra-pair copulation; and more. Her conclusions are smart, thought-provoking, and hilariously unexpected.
Every city has its Upper East Side, and in Wednesday’s memoir, readers everywhere will recognize the strange cultural codes of powerful social hierarchies and the compelling desire to climb them. They will also see that Upper East Side mothers want the same things for their children that all mothers want—safety, happiness, and success—and not even sky-high penthouses and chauffeured SUVs can protect this ecologically released tribe from the universal experiences of anxiety and loss. When Wednesday’s life turns upside down, she learns how deep the bonds of female friendship really are.
Intelligent, funny, and heartfelt, Primates of Park Avenue lifts a veil on a secret, elite world within a world—the exotic, fascinating, and strangely familiar culture of privileged Manhattan motherhood. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
• Education—B.S., University of Michigan; Ph.D., Yale University
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York
Wendy "Wednesday" Martin is an American author, blogger, and commentator on parenting, step-parenting, and popular culture. She has written for Psychology Today, New York Post, Daily Telegraph, New York Times, Cosmopolitan, Fitness, Glamour, and Huffington Post. To promote her two books, she has commented on CNN, NPR, BBC radio, Fox News, and Weekend Today.
Background
Martin was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She did her undergraduate work at the University of Michigan where she studied anthropology. She also received a doctorate in comparative literature and cultural studies from Yale University. Her doctoral work examined early psychoanalysis and anthropology.
Martin has taught literature and cultural studies at Yale, The New School, and Baruch College.
Books
Martin is the author of Marlene Dietrich (1995); Stepmonster: A New Look at Why Real Stepmothers Think, Feel and Act the Way We Do (2009), and Primates of Park Avenue (2015).
Primates controversy
Martin moved to the Upper East Side neighborhood of Manhattan with her family in 2004. Inspired by Jane Goodall's work, she began researching her experiences there for Primates of Park Avenue. The memoir documents life among the wealthy, stay-at-home mothers in the area, examining the women's behavior from a social researcher's perspective.
In May, 2015, prior to the release of Primates, Martin published an article in the New York Times detailing the practice of "wife bonuses," which she uncovered in her research for the book. According to Martin, some of the Upper East Side wives receive "bonuses"—in the form of cash payouts—from their husbands as a reward for domestic performance. Subsequent articles in other papers, however, refuted the practice.
Further articles—in the New York Post and Washington Post—also noted discrepancies in the book, prompting Martin's publisher, Simon & Schuster, to point out that altering names, dates, and other details out of concern for privacy is not uncommon in memoir writing. A disclaimer to that effect will be included in future editions of Primates. Martin insists, however, on her work's accuracy: "I stand by what I wrote, absolutely 100 percent."
Personal
Martin is married to Joel Moser, a lawyer, financier, and adjunct professor at Columbia University. The couple has two sons together (born in 2001 and 2007) and two-daughters from Moser's previous marriage. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/2/2015.)
Book Reviews
An amusing, perceptive and, at times thrillingly evil takedown of upper-class culture by an outsider with a front-row seat…Martin’s writing is confident and evocative…. Her reading of the fashion attire of real estate brokers for "triple mint" apartments is brilliant…at a time when a social comedy of the rich a la Tom Wolfe has been lost in national discourse…. [I]t’s fun to dip into a sophisticated, if silly, look at the Upper East Side’s Twilight Zone. Primates of Park Avenue is also a good reminder that as much as we may envy the wealthy, they fight every day for a place in their own social hierarchy, too.
New York Times Book Review
Juicy, sexy, bawdy stuff...the perfect summer beach book...the tasty tome we'll all be devouring when the weather warms.
New York Daily News
Applying the chimpanzee research of Jane Goodall or the observations of bonobos by Frans de Waal to one's neighbors and co-workers is great fun…, Martin rewards those of us in humbler circumstances the undeniably pleasant frisson of superiority that comes with finding fault with those better endowed financially, socially, sartorially.
Chicago Tribune
Martin puts her academic background (anthropology classes and a doctorate in cultural studies) to witty good use in describing this wealthy tribe’s extremes…it became clear to me, reading Martin’s book, that our Bay Area tribes aren’t so different from those of New York.
San Francisco Chronicle
Picture Real Housewives, add in pop-science, and you have Wednesday Martin’s new book.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
A very funny, and slightly scary, look at the denizens of Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
Connecticut Post
An eye-popping insider's guide.
People
Think privileged NYC wives are another species? Martin goes undercover in this dishy memoir and reminds us that we all have something in common.
Glamour
Amusing...incisive...a wryly entertaining guide to this rarefied subculture.
Economist
Recalls Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique…. Primates is pacy and skillfully weaves cultural insight with personal anecdote…. This is an intriguing insight into a closed world. It is easy to dismiss the subjects as frivolous and mean, which many seem to be. But our envy and schadenfreude makes the rich a compelling curiosity.
Financial Times
The Midwest-raised Martin is easy for readers to sympathize with as she attempts to find new friends while old ones drift away.... It's hard, though, to care about her neighbors—and even about Martin when she finds herself coveting an $8,000 Berkin bag in order to show dominance within the pack.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) This anthropological journey into the wilds of New York City's most exclusive zip code could have easily devolved into condescension, but instead it proves that mothers everywhere want the same thing: health and happiness for their progeny.
Library Journal
Any population is fair game for anthropological research, so why not the super-rich, super-thin, and oh-so-well-dressed mothers of New York's Upper East Side?... Illuminating and fun.
Booklist
[T]he book becomes a useful guide for...upwardly mobile...women looking inward to understand themselves better—or...to socially maneuver more efficiently. Sometimes funny but effective for the same reason a Birkin is: it's designed for a certain group of people, and likely them alone.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. In her introduction, author Wednesday Martin asks herself "who were they really, these glamorous, stylishly turned out women with sophisticated babies?" (2). Answer Wednesday’s question with your group. Who are the women of the Upper East Side really? Is there an Upper East Side in your town? Did your conception of these women change after reading Primates of Park Avenue? Why or why not?
2. On page 8, Wednesday discusses her strong desire to fit in with the mommies of her new neighborhood, and for her son to fit in by extension. She writes that from her studies in literature and anthropology, she knows that "without a sense of belonging, and actually belonging, we great apes are lost.... Particularly female ones...do not fare well." Do you think that all people feel this way to some extent? What about all mothers? Is wanting to fit in and feel a sense of community particularly important for new mothers?
3. Why do you think Wednesday Martin chooses to frame the beginning of her memoir as an academic study? Does the format add humor? Does it give greater credibility to the author? Both? Think about how you would describe your own world anthropologically. Are you part of a tribe? If so, which tribe?
4. Discuss the way gender figures into life on the Upper East Side, according to Primates of Park Avenue. Wednesday writes on page 24 that "in Manhattan, the woman is in charge of finding a place for the family to live." What else do the women seem "in charge" of in Manhattan? Of what are they decidedly not in charge?
5. "Women on the Upper East Side, particularly women in their thirties and women on the downhill slope of middle age, are utterly attuned to and obsessed with power" (83). Consider this power obsession in connection with Wednesday Martin’s obsession with acquiring a Birkin bag. What is the implicit connection between expensive handbags and power? Does owning a Birkin on the Upper East Side make one more powerful? What is your tribe’s "it" bag? Is it a "fetish object"?
6. Many of the women in Primates of Park Avenue are described as hyper-dedicated, particularly when it comes to their bodies. Describing a workout class in the Hamptons, Wednesday Martin writes that these women, herself included, put themselves through hell "to bond with their fellow tribe members, but also to measure up to, and to take the measure of, others, day by day, evening by evening, event by event, class by class" (129). Does their physical appearance symbolize something intrinsic? Something about their worth? What is the connection between the body and the person, in the case of an Upper East Side mommy?
7. What surprised you the most about Wednesday’s memoir? Which aspect of these women’s lives feels most foreign to you and your life? Which aspects feel more familiar?
8. How does the loss of Wednesday’s unborn daughter, Daphne, change the course of the story? Do you think losing a baby changes her perspective on life—particularly life on the Upper East Side?
9. Compare and contrast Wednesday Martin with her new circle. How are they similar? How do they differ? According to what you’ve read, does Wednesday retain her subjective view of this "tribe," or does she become too similar to be subjective?
10. "From an anthropological perspective, these wealthy women who seem and are so fortunate are also marooned in their sex-segregated world" (162) writes Wednesday Martin about the marriages she sees all around her in New York City. She describes these so-called arrangements as "fragile and contingent and women are still dependent...on their men" (163). Does sex segregation and complete dependence on one’s partner seem strange in the twenty-first century, or do these marriages seem relatively standard? Do you agree with Wednesday that these women are perhaps in a less enviable position than one might assume? Why or why not?
11. Consider the ways in which anxiety is described in Primates of Park Avenue. Do you agree that "having too many choices is stressful" (178), or that a luxurious lifestyle ultimately leads to more—not less—unhappiness?
12. Discuss the title of the memoir: Primates of Park Avenue. Do you agree, as the title suggests, that these women who live a certain kind of lifestyle on the Upper East Side are really no different than any other women anywhere? Are we all just animals, doing what we can to survive and create the safest, most favorable conditions we can for our families?
13. Primates of Park Avenue is ultimately a testament to the strength of all women to endure the pain that so often accompanies motherhood. In her grief, Wednesday discovers another side of the beautiful, competitive women around her: love. In her time of need, these women came forward and offered emotional support and understanding, bolstering the bond between women of the same tribe who know "just how closely the territories of mothering and loss overlap" (198). Discus this "secret," as Wednesday coined it, with your group members. Why do you think motherhood, in particular, feels so deeply connected to loss?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Wright Brothers
David McCullough, 2015
Simon & Schuster
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781476728759
Summary
Two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize David McCullough tells the dramatic story-behind-the-story about the courageous brothers who taught the world how to fly: Wilbur and Orville Wright.
On a winter day in 1903, in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, two unknown brothers from Ohio changed history. But it would take the world some time to believe what had happened: the age of flight had begun, with the first heavier-than-air, powered machine carrying a pilot.
Who were these men and how was it that they achieved what they did?
David McCullough, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, tells the surprising, profoundly American story of Wilbur and Orville Wright.
Far more than a couple of unschooled Dayton bicycle mechanics who happened to hit on success, they were men of exceptional courage and determination, and of far-ranging intellectual interests and ceaseless curiosity, much of which they attributed to their upbringing. The house they lived in had no electricity or indoor plumbing, but there were books aplenty, supplied mainly by their preacher father, and they never stopped reading.
When they worked together, no problem seemed to be insurmountable. Wilbur was unquestionably a genius. Orville had such mechanical ingenuity as few had ever seen. That they had no more than a public high school education, little money and no contacts in high places, never stopped them in their “mission” to take to the air. Nothing did, not even the self-evident reality that every time they took off in one of their contrivances, they risked being killed.
In this thrilling book, master historian David McCullough draws on the immense riches of the Wright Papers, including private diaries, notebooks, scrapbooks, and more than a thousand letters from private family correspondence to tell the human side of the Wright Brothers’ story, including the little-known contributions of their sister, Katharine, without whom things might well have gone differently for them. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 7, 1933
• Where—Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., Yale University
• Awards—National Book Award (twice); Pulitzer Prize (twice); Presidential Medal of Honor
• Currently—lives in Boston, Massachusetts
David McCullough is an American author, narrator, historian, and lecturer. He is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian award.
McCullough's first book was The Johnstown Flood (1968), and he has since written nine more on such topics as Harry S. Truman, John Adams, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the Wright Brothers. McCullough has also narrated numerous documentaries, such as The Civil War by Ken Burns, as well as the 2003 film Seabiscuit, and he hosted American Experience for twelve years.
McCullough's two Pulitzer Prize-winning books, Truman (1992) and John Adams (2001), have been adapted by HBO into a TV film and a mini-series, respectively. McCullough's history, The Greater Journey (2011), is about Americans in Paris from the 1830s to the 1900s.
Youth and education
McCullough was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Ruth (nee Rankin) and Christian Hax McCullough. He is of Scots-Irish descent. He was educated at Linden Avenue Grade School and Shady Side Academy, in his hometown of Pittsburgh.
One of four sons, McCullough had a "marvelous" childhood with a wide range of interests, ranging from sports to drawing cartoons. McCullough's parents and his grandmother, who read to him often, introduced him to books at an early age. His parents often talked about history, a topic he says should be discussed more often. McCullough "loved school, every day"; he contemplated many career choices, everything from architect, actor, painter, writer, to lawyer, and contemplated attending medical school for a time.
McCullough attended Yale University, graduating with honors in English in 1955. He considered it a "privilege" to study at Yale because of faculty members such as John O'Hara, John Hersey, Robert Penn Warren, and Brendan Gill. He occasionally ate lunch with the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and playwright Thornton Wilder. Wilder, says McCullough, taught him that a competent writer maintains "an air of freedom" in the storyline, so that a reader will not anticipate the outcome, even if the book is non-fiction.
While at Yale, he became a member of Skull and Bones. He served apprenticeships at Time, Life, the United States Information Agency, and American Heritage, where he enjoyed research. "Once I discovered the endless fascination of doing the research and of doing the writing, I knew I had found what I wanted to do in my life."
Early career
After graduation, McCullough moved to New York City, where Sports Illustrated hired him as a trainee. He later worked as an editor and writer for the United States Information Agency in Washington, D.C. After working for twelve years, including a position at American Heritage, in editing and writing, McCullough reached a point where he believed he "could attempt something" on his own.
Although he had no idea that he would end up writing history, McCullough "stumbled upon" a story that he felt was "powerful, exciting, and very worth telling." After three years of writing in his spare time (while still at American Heritage), he published The Johnstown Flood. The book, a chronicle of one of the worst flood disasters in United States history, was published in 1968 to high praise. John Leonard, of the New York Times, said of McCullough, "We have no better social historian." Despite precarious financial times, but encouraged by his wife Rosalee, he decided to become a full-time writer.
People often ask me if I'm working on a book. That's not how I feel. I feel like I work in a book. It's like putting myself under a spell. And this spell, if you will, is so real to me that if I have to leave my work for a few days, I have to work myself back into the spell when I come back. It's almost like hypnosis.
Recognition
After the success of The Johnstown Flood, two new publishers offered him contracts, one to write about the Great Chicago Fire and another about the San Francisco earthquake. Not wishing to become "Bad News McCullough," he decided to write about people who "were not always foolish and inept or irresponsible." He also remembered Thornton Wilder telling told him that "he got an idea for a book or a play when he wanted to learn about something. Then, he'd check to see if anybody had already done it, and if they hadn't, he'd do it."
McCullough decided to write a history of the Brooklyn Bridge, which he had walked across many times.
To me history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn't just part of our civic responsibility. To me it's an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or music is.
Published in 1972, critics hailed The Great Bridge (1972) as "the definitive book on the event."
Five years later, The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal was released, gaining McCullough widespread recognition. The book won the National Book Award in History, the Samuel Eliot Morison Award, the Francis Parkman Prize, and the Cornelius Ryan Award.
In 1977, McCullough traveled to the White House to advise Jimmy Carter and the United States Senate on the Torrijos-Carter Treaties, which would give Panama control of the Canal. Carter later said that the treaties, which were agreed upon to hand over ownership of the Canal to Panama, would not have passed, had it not been for the book.
Other works
McCullough's fourth work was his first biography, reinforcing his belief that "history is the story of people." Released in 1981, Mornings on Horseback tells the story of seventeen years in the life of Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States. The work ranged from 1869, when Roosevelt was ten years old, to 1886, and tells of a "life intensely lived." The book won McCullough's second National Book Award, his first Los Angeles Times Prize for Biography, and New York Public Library Literary Lion Award.
Next, he published Brave Companions, a collection of essays written over a period of twenty years. Essays cover historical or literary figures such as Louis Agassiz, Alexander von Humboldt, John and Washington Roebling, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Conrad Aiken, and Frederic Remington.
McCullough's next book, his second biography, Truman (1993), was about the 33rd president. That book won McCullough his first Pulitzer Prize for "Best Biography or Autobiography" and his second Francis Parkman Prize. Two years later, the book was adapted as an HBO television movie by the same name, with Gary Sinise in the role of Truman. Commenting on his subject, Truman said
I think it's important to remember that these men are not perfect. If they were marble gods, what they did wouldn't be so admirable. The more we see the founders as humans the more we can understand them.
Seven years later, in 2001, McCullough published his third biography John Adams, about the life of the second US president. One of the fastest-selling non-fiction books in history, it won McCullough's second Pulitzer Prize for "Best Biography or Autobiography." He intended the book to be about the two founding fathers and back-to-back presidents, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, but he became so intrigued with Adams that he decided to focus on Adams alone. In 2008 HBO adapted the book as a seven-part miniseries by the same name, with Paul Giamatti in the title role.
Published in 2005, McCullough's 1776, tells the story of the founding year of the US, focusing on George Washington, the amateur army, and other struggles for independence. Because of McCullough's popularity, its initial printing was 1.25 million copies, many more than the average history book. Upon its release, the book became a number-one bestseller in the US.
McCullough considered writing a sequel to 1776 but instead wrote about Americans in Paris between 1830 and 1900. The Greater Journey, published in 2011, covers 19th-century Americans, including Mark Twain and Samuel Morse, who migrated to Paris and went on to achieve importance in culture or innovation. Others included in the book are Elihu Washburne, the American ambassador to France during the Franco-Prussian War, and Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female doctor in the US.
Personal life
David McCullough lives in Boston, Massachusetts, and is married to Rosalee Barnes McCullough, whom he met at age 17 in Pittsburgh. The couple has five children and nineteen grandchildren. He enjoys sports, history and art, including watercolor and portrait painting.
His son David Jr., an English teacher at Wellesley High School in the Boston suburbs, achieved sudden fame in 2012 with his commencement speech. He told graduating students, "you're not special" nine times, and his speech went viral on YouTube. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/2/2015.)
Book Reviews
[McCullough] takes the Wrights’ story aloft.... Concise, exciting, and fact-packed... Mr. McCullough presents all this with dignified panache, and with detail so granular you may wonder how it was all collected.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
A story of timeless importance, told with uncommon empathy and fluency.... A story, well told, about what might be the most astonishing feat mankind has ever accomplished.... The Wright Brothers soars.
Daniel Okrent - New York Times Book Review
David McCullough has etched a brisk, admiring portrait of the modest, hardworking Ohioans who designed an airplane in their bicycle shop and solved the mystery of flight on the sands of Kitty Hawk, N.C. He captures the marvel of what the Wrights accomplished and, just as important, the wonder felt by their contemporaries.... Mr. McCullough is in his element writing about seemingly ordinary folk steeped in the cardinal American virtues—self-reliance and can-do resourcefulness.
Roger Lowenstein - Wall Street Journal
The nitty-gritty of exactly how [the Wrights] succeeded is told in fascinating detail.
Buzzy Jackson - Boston Globe
Few historians have captured the essence of America—its rise from an agrarian nation to the world's dominant power—like David McCullough.... McCullough has defined American icons and revealed new dimensions to stories that long seemed exhausted.... An elegant, sweeping look at the two Americans who went where no others had gone before and whose work helped create a national excellence in aviation that continues today.
Ray Locker - USA Today
McCullough’s magical account of [the Wright Brothers'] early adventures—enhanced by volumes of family correspondence, written records, and his own deep understanding of the country and the era—shows as never before how two Ohio boys from a remarkable family taught the world to fly.
Reeve Lindbergh - Washington Post
McCullough vividly re-creates the failures and disappointments as the Wright brothers puzzle out the science of bird- and insect-wing design.... [McCullough] continues to deliver high-quality material with familiar facility and grace.
Larry Lebowitz - Miami Herald
We all know what they did and where they did it—Kitty Hawk, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. But McCullough digs deeply to find out how they did it, and why they did it, and what happened to them in the years that followed.
Harry Levins - St. Louis Post-Dispatch
A compelling, upbeat story that underscores the importance of industriousness, creative intelligence and indomitable patience.
Doug Childers - Richmond Times-Dispatch
Pleasurable to read.... McCullough has a gift for finding the best in his subjects without losing perspective on their flaws.
Margaret Quamme - Columbus Dispatch
A master storyteller.... The brothers’ story unfolds and develops with grace and insight in a style at which McCullough is simply the best.
David Hendricks - San Antonio Express-News
[McCullough's] evident admiration for the Wrights leads him to soft-pedal their crasser side, like their epic patent lawsuits, which stymied American aviation for years. Still, McCullough's usual warm, evocative prose makes for an absorbing narrative; he conveys both the drama of the birth of flight and the homespun genius of America's golden age of innovation.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [I]mpeccable writing with historical rigor and strong character definition.... [The Wright brothers] had limited formal education, with the author instead attributing his subjects' success to industry, imagination, and persistence.... A signal contribution to Wright historiography. —John Carver Edwards, formerly with Univ. of Georgia Libs.
Library Journal
A charmingly pared-down life of the "boys" that grounds their dream of flight in decent character and work ethic. There is a quiet, stoical awe to the accomplishments of these two unprepossessing Ohio brothers in this fluently rendered, skillfully focused study.... An educational and inspiring biography of seminal American innovators.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for The Wright Brothers:
1. Talk about the Wright family circle—especially Sister Katharine and Bishop Milton Wright—and the influence its members had on Orville and Wilbur and their achievement. This leads, inevitably, to the roles that upbringing and genetics play in individual accomplishment. To what extent are all of us shaped by our family environment? How much of our accomplishments are fully our own?
2. Talk about the differences—and similarities—between the two brothers?
3. Follow-up to Question 1: What goes into making genius like the Wright brothers, aside from sheer intelligence? Consider traits such as perseverance, focus, and energy. What else? What about the role of imagination?
4. In his book, David McCullough reveals that when Wilbur Wright was in France, he spent a fair amount of time at the Louvre and that he was deeply moved by the great Gothic works he saw. What is the importance that the author ascribes to that interest—and why? What does it suggest about the importance of the liberal arts even in the fields of science and technology?
5. Why were the Wright brothers dismissed in the United States but taken seriously in France? What was the difference in culture and/or politics that generated interest on the part of the French but not the Americans?
6. Wilbur and Orville displayed few emotions. Do you think this hampered the author in his attempt to characterize the two men, to portray them as rich, fully-developed human beings? How does McCullough bring them to life—does he, or doesn't he? Do the two men come across as heroic? Why or why not?
7. Why was the story of the Wright brothers' achievement so unlikely? Talk about the hardships, knowledge deficits, and other obstacles they had to overcome in order to get their invention off the ground, so to speak?
8. What struck you most in the story of the the Wright brothers? What surprised you or impressed you? How much did you know (or understand) before you read McCullough's book...and what did you come away having learned?
9. In 1908, when the Wrights finally showed their plane to the press, one reporter wrote: "this spectacle of men flying was so startling, so bewildering to the senses...that we all stood like so many marble men." Imagine yourself in that situation: how might you have reacted? Can you think of a future technological advancement that might astonish you the same way?
10. Were the brothers compensated fairly for their invention? As someone replied to Wilbur, "I am afraid, my friend, that your usually sound judgment has been warped by the desire for great wealth." What is your assessment of that remark—fair or unfair?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)