The Husband Hunters: American Heiresses Who Married into the British Aristocracy
Anne de Courcy, 2018
St. Martin's Press
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250164599
Summary
A deliciously told group biography of the young, rich, American heiresses who married into the impoverished British aristocracy at the turn of the twentieth century—The real women who inspired Downton Abbey.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century and for the first few years of the twentieth, a strange invasion took place in Britain.
The citadel of power, privilege and breeding in which the titled, land-owning governing class had barricaded itself for so long was breached. The incomers were a group of young women who, fifty years earlier, would have been looked on as the alien denizens of another world—the New World, to be precise.
From 1874—the year that Jennie Jerome, the first known "Dollar Princess," married Randolph Churchill—to 1905, dozens of young American heiresses married into the British peerage, bringing with them all the fabulous wealth, glamour and sophistication of the Gilded Age.
Anne de Courcy sets the stories of these young women and their families in the context of their times. Based on extensive first-hand research, drawing on diaries, memoirs and letters, this richly entertaining group biography reveals what they thought of their new lives in England—and what England thought of them. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Anne de Courcy is the author of several widely acclaimed works of social history and biography, including The Husband Hunters: American: American Heiresses Who Married into the British Aristocracy (2018), Margot at War (2014), The Fishing Fleet (2012), Debs at War (2005), and The Viceroy's Daughters (2000). She lives in London and Gloucestershire. (From the publisher.)
Visit the author's website.
Book Reviews
[A] diverting new study…[the American heiresses] were brave. They were venturesome…they were just what was needed to shake the cocktail and bring some pizazz to the party. De Courcy conjures it all with skill.
Tina Brown - New York Times Book Review
Anglophiles fascinated by the intricate tribal codes of the British upper classes will find plenty to feed their interest in this narrative...if we’re looking to history to better understand our own time, The Husband Hunters has something to say about how we got here.
Boston Globe
Anne de Courcy has written the definitive account of the real-life buccaneers . . . de Courcy argues with conviction that it wasn't simply about money. Englishmen found the dollar princesses irresistible and were drawn to their vitality, social ease and lack of stuffiness . . . de Courcy is excellent on the cultural clashes between the Americans and British.
Times (UK)
Cleverly researched, sparkling with diamonds and wickedly funny (a Book of the Year).
Jane Ridley - Spectator (UK)
A true account of the women who inspired Downton Abbey.… [de Courcy] gets in their heads and in their homes, exploring what life was like for them after their moves and the clash of cultures that ensued.
Vanity Fair
[F]ascinating but surface-skimming.… De Courcy is best at describing upper-class life on both sides of the Atlantic, but the personalities of the young women never completely shine through.… Yet there’s enough glitz and glamour to enthrall those who [loved] the recent royal nuptials.
Publishers Weekly
Vanderbilts, Astors, Churchills, Marlboroughs; diamonds, tiaras, yachts, mansions; all are documented in glorious detail and should satisfy those readers with insatiable thirst for all things peerage.
Booklist
[Anne] de Courcy brings the Victorian and Edwardian eras vibrantly to life with her meticulously well-researched book, conveyed in an approachable prose style.… A highly readable social history that contains all of the juicy drama of a prime-time soap opera.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers Talking Points to help start a discussion for THE HUSBAND HUNTERS ... then take off on your own:
1. What were the downsides of wealthy young American women marrying into families of the English aristocracy with their cold, crumbling manses? Could you ever have seen yourself doing so?
2. Anne de Courcy posits that the reason these women opted for English marriages was to escape the competitiveness of New York society in the Gilded Age. Take some time to discuss what that culture was like—and the ways in which New York and British social hierarchies differed. Consider that in Britain, money was no match for title: a duchess, no matter how little money she possessed, would always pull rank, even against a wealthy earl's wife? Is that social ranking any better (or worse) than New York society?
3. What, in fact, were the differences between a gilded American woman and her English cohort? Consider the degree of female power and independence in both countries.
4. Talk about the American "bling"—the number of dresses required for the Newport (Rhode Island) season and the outlandish jewels worn, some of which (necklaces) hung to the floor.
5. What is the history of the 400 families of New York? How and when did it crop up, and who ruled the roost?
6. The Husband Hunters also treats us to a study of monstrous mothers. Talk about some of the most egregious, including (and especially) Mrs. Bradley-Martin.
7. What was life like for the doyenne of a large English estate? How did that country life differ from the sparkling urban social seasons?
8. Which heiress's marital story do you find most interesting …or appalling?
9. How did the invasion of American heiresses change English culture? Do you end up admiring these women and their energies?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Fly Girls: How Five Daring Women Defied All Odds and Made Aviation History
Chuck O'Brien, 2018
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781328876645
Summary
The untold story of five women who fought to compete against men in the high-stakes national air races of the 1920s and 1930s — and won
Between the world wars, no sport was more popular, or more dangerous, than airplane racing. Thousands of fans flocked to multi‑day events, and cities vied with one another to host them.
The pilots themselves were hailed as dashing heroes who cheerfully stared death in the face.
Well, the men were hailed. Female pilots were more often ridiculed than praised for what the press portrayed as silly efforts to horn in on a manly, and deadly, pursuit.
Fly Girls recounts how a cadre of women banded together to break the original glass ceiling: the entrenched prejudice that conspired to keep them out of the sky.
O’Brien weaves together the stories of five remarkable women: Florence Klingensmith, a high‑school dropout who worked for a dry cleaner in Fargo, North Dakota; Ruth Elder, an Alabama divorcee; Amelia Earhart, the most famous, but not necessarily the most skilled; Ruth Nichols, who chafed at the constraints of her blue‑blood family’s expectations; and Louise Thaden, the mother of two young kids who got her start selling coal in Wichita.
Together, they fought for the chance to race against the men—and in 1936 one of them would triumph in the toughest race of all.
Like Hidden Figures and Girls of Atomic City, Fly Girls celebrates a little-known slice of history in which tenacious, trail-blazing women braved all obstacles to achieve greatness. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
• Education—Northwestern Unniversity
• Awards—Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism
• Currently—lives in New Hampshie
The New York Times Book Review has hailed Keith O'Brien for his "keen reportorial eye" and "lyrical" writing style. He has written two books: Outside Shot: Big Dreams, Hard Times, and One County's Quest for Basketball Greatness (2013) and Fly Girls: How Five Daring Women Defied All Odds and Made Aviation History (2018).
O'Brien has been a finalist for the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sportswriting, and contributed to National Public Radio for more than a decade. His radio stories have appeared on NPR's All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Weekend Edition, as well as Marketplace, Here & Now, Only a Game, and This American Life.
O'Brien has written for the New York Times, New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, Politico, Slate, Esquire.com, and the Oxford American, among others.
He is a former staff writer for both the Boston Globe and the New Orleans Times-Picayune. As a newspaper reporter, he won multiple awards, including the Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism.
O'Brien lives in New Hampshire with his wife and two children. (From Amazon. Retrieved 8/25/2018.)
Book Reviews
Exhilarating…vibrant.… O’Brien’s prose reverberates with fiery crashes, then stings with the tragedy of lives lost in the cockpit and sometimes, equally heartbreaking, on the ground.
Nathalia Holt - New York Times Book Review
Mr. O’Brien, a former reporter for the Boston Globe working in the tradition of Hidden Figures and The Girls of Atomic City, has recovered a fascinating chapter not just in feminism and aviation but in 20th-century American history.
Wall Street Journal
Keith O’Brien has brought these women—mostly long-hidden and forgotten—back into the light where they belong. And he’s done it with grace, sensitivity and a cinematic eye for detail that makes Fly Girls both exhilarating and heartbreaking.
USA Today
Let’s call it the Hidden Figures rule: If there’s a part of the past you thought was exclusively male, you’re probably wrong. Case in point are these stories of Amelia Earhart and other female pilots who fought to fly.
Time
A riveting account that puts us in the cockpit with Amelia Earhart and other brave women who took to the skies in the unreliable flying machines of the ’20s and ’30s.
People
[E]xciting…. This fast-paced, meticulously researched history will appeal to a wide audience both as an entertaining tale of bravery and as an insightful look at early aviation.
Publishers Weekly
O'Brien details in crisp and engaging writing how his subjects came to love aviation, along with their struggles and victories with flying, the rampant sexism they experienced, and the hard choices they faced regarding work and family.
Library Journal
In the decades between the world wars, women took to the skies as daring, record-breaking fliers.… O'Brien vividly recounts the dangers of early flight…. A vivid, suspenseful story of women determined to… fulfill their lofty dreams.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers Talking Points to help start a discussion for FLY GIRLS … then take off on your own:
1. Overall, how were female aviators treated in the 1920s and '30s? How were all women defined during that era; what were society's expectations for them?
2. Follow-up to Question 1: Did you find yourself becoming angry as you read of the fly girls' treatment at the hand of males? Consider the explanation about women crashing their planes (as did men): "Women are lacking in certain qualities that men possess." Or consider the debate about allowing women to fly while menstruating. What else did you find demeaning? If you came of age before the woman's movement took hold in the late 1960s and '70s, do any of those arguments sound familiar to you?
3. Spend time talking about the women aviators. Of the five—Ruth Nichols, Louise Thaden, Ruth Elder, Florence Klingensmith, and Amelia Earhart—whose story most engaged you? Are some struggles more impressive than others? Discuss the women's different backgrounds. Despite those differences, however, what did they share in common?
4. The women were all connected in one way or another. Talk about their relationships and the formation of the Ninety-Nines.
5. What was the state of aviation in the era between the two wars? Talk about flight technology and the dangers all fliers faced.
6. When Louise Thaden became the first woman to win "The Powder Puff Derby" (nice, huh?), Charles Lindbergh had little to say other than, well... "I haven't anything to say about that." What is your reaction to Lindbergh's response?
7. Author Keith O'Brien says of the fliers: "each of the women went missing in her own way." Why does he make that observation, and what does he mean by the word "missing" other than, like Amelia Earhart, missing literally over the ocean? In what ways did the other fliers go "missing."
8. In the New York Times Book Review, Nathalia Holt makes note of the book's title, Fly Girls, pointing out that "girls" is an often derogatory term used to equate serious, mature women with children. Do you think O'Brien used the term "girls" without thinking (as well as the fact that "girl" titles are a major publishing trend—see our LibBlog on the 200+ girl titles)? Or maybe he meant the title ironically?
9. Holt also notices the way O'Brien describes the women's physical attributes and the way their clothes drape their bodies or fit snugly. She posits that the focus on women's appearances goes against the very grain of the book. Is Holt overly sensitive …or has O'Brien fallen back on a standard sexist trope? On the other hand, perhaps O'Brien is providing the grainy details of good journalism—writing the same of these women as he does of his male subjects (you know, how a man's suit jacket drapes his torso).
10. How much has changed today for women? Clearly, females have been accepted into jobs previously restricted to males. But what about the choices women continue to struggle with regarding work and family? Has that changed?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us …
Michael Pollan, 2018
Penguin Publishing
480 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594204227
Summary
A brilliant and brave investigation into the medical and scientific revolution taking place around psychedelic drugs—and the spellbinding story of his own life-changing psychedelic experiences
When Michael Pollan set out to research how LSD and psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) are being used to provide relief to people suffering from difficult-to-treat conditions such as depression, addiction and anxiety, he did not intend to write what is undoubtedly his most personal book.
But upon discovering how these remarkable substances are improving the lives not only of the mentally ill but also of healthy people coming to grips with the challenges of everyday life, he decided to explore the landscape of the mind in the first person as well as the third.
Thus began a singular adventure into various altered states of consciousness, along with a dive deep into both the latest brain science and the thriving underground community of psychedelic therapists.
Pollan sifts the historical record to separate the truth about these mysterious drugs from the myths that have surrounded them since the 1960s, when a handful of psychedelic evangelists inadvertently catalyzed a powerful backlash against what was then a promising field of research.
A unique and elegant blend of science, memoir, travel writing, history, and medicine, How to Change Your Mind is a triumph of participatory journalism. By turns dazzling and edifying, it is the gripping account of a journey to an exciting and unexpected new frontier in our understanding of the mind, the self, and our place in the world.
The true subject of Pollan's "mental travelogue" is not just psychedelic drugs but also the eternal puzzle of human consciousness and how, in a world that offers us both suffering and joy, we can do our best to be fully present and find meaning in our lives. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February 6, 1955
• Where—Raised in Long Island, New York, USA
• Education—N/A
• Awards—California Book Award; James Beard Award, 2000 and 2006; Reuters-IUCN Global Award-Environmental Journalism.
• Currently—lives in Berkeley, California
Few writers have done more to revitalize our national conversation about food and eating than Michael Pollan, an award-winning journalist and bestselling author whose witty, offbeat nonfiction shines an illuminating spotlight on various aspects of agriculture, the food chain, and man's place in the natural world
Pollan's first book, Second Nature: A Gardener's Education (1991), was selected by the American Horticultural Society as one of the 75 best books ever written about gardening. But it was Botany of Desire, published a full decade later, that put him on the map. A fascinating look at the interconnected evolution of plants and people, Botany... was one of the surprise bestsellers of 2001. Five years later, Pollan produced The Omnivore's Dilemma, a delightful, compulsively readable "ecology of eating" that was named one the ten best books of the year by the New York Times and Washington Post. And in 2008, came In Defense of Food.
A professor of journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, Pollan is a former executive editor for Harper's and a contributing writer for the New York Times, where he continues to examine the fascinating intersections between science and culture. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
How to Change Your Mind is a calm survey of the past, present and future. A book about a blurry subject, it is cleareyed and assured. Pollan is not the most obvious guide for such a journey. He is, to judge from his self-reporting, a giant square.… [But] Pollan's initial skepticism and general lack of hipness work wonders for the material. The problem with more enthusiastic or even hallucinatory writers on the subject is that they just compound the zaniness at the heart of the thing; it's all too much of the same tone, like having George Will walk you through the tax code. Like another best-selling Michael (Lewis), Pollan keeps you turning the pages even through his wonkiest stretches.
John Williams - New York Times
As is to be expected of a nonfiction writer of his caliber, Pollan makes the story of the rise and fall and rise of psychedelic drug research gripping and surprising. He also reminds readers that excitement around any purportedly groundbreaking substance tends to dim as studies widen.… Where Pollan truly shines is in his exploration of the mysticism and spirituality of psychedelic experiences.… Michael Pollan, somehow predictably, does the impossible: He makes losing your mind sound like the sanest thing a person could do.
Tom Bissell - New York Times Book Review
Pollan’s deeply researched chronicle will enlighten those who think of psychedelics chiefly as a kind of punchline to a joke about the Woodstock generation and hearten the growing number who view them as a potential antidote to our often stubbornly narrow minds.… [E]ngaging and informative.
Boston Globe
Sweeping and often thrilling…. It is to Pollan’s credit that, while he ranks among the best of science writers, he’s willing, when necessary, to abandon that genre’s fixation on materialist explanation as the only path to understanding. One of the book’s important messages is that the therapeutic benefits of psychedelics, for the dying or seriously ill, can’t be separated from the mystical experiences to which they give rise.
Guardian
Journalist Michael Pollan explored psychoactive plants in The Botany of Desire (2001). In this bold, intriguing study, he delves further…Pollan even ‘shakes the snow globe’ himself, chemically self-experimenting in the spirit of psychologist William James, who speculated about the wilder shores of consciousness more than a century ago.
Nature, International Journal of Science
Known for his writing on plants and food, Michael Pollan… brings all the curiosity and skepticism for which he is well known to a decidedly different topic.… How to Change Your Mind beautifully updates and synthesizes the science of psychedelics, with a highly personalized touch.
Science
Amid new scientific interest in the potential healing properties of psychedelic drugs, Pollan…sets about researching their history—and giving them a (supervised!) try himself. He came away impressed by their promise in treating addiction and depression—and with his mind expanded. Yours will be too.
People
[Starred review] [A] brilliant history of psychedelics across cultures and generations…. This nuanced and sophisticated exploration, which asks big questions about meaning-making and spiritual experience, is thought-provoking and eminently readable.
Publishers Weekly
Before Timothy Leary… scientists and doctors saw… psychedelics as tremendous new tools for understanding consciousness. Now, these back-burnered drugs are proving effective in treating such disorders as PTSD and depression.
Library Journal
[Starred review] Pollan’s…elucidating and enthralling inquiry combines fascinating and significant history with daring and resonant reportage and memoir, and looks forward to a new open-mindedness toward psychedelics and the benefits of diverse forms of consciousness.
Booklist
(Starred review) The author's evenhanded but generally positive approach shoos away scaremongering while fully recognizing that we're out in the tall grass….A trip well worth taking, eye-opening and even mind-blowing.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers Talking Points to help start a discussion for HOW TO CHANGE YOUR MIND … then take off on your own:
1. Why are so many of us intent on escaping our own consciousness? Consider Author Michael Pollan's statement that "if everyday waking consciousness [is] but one of several possible ways to construct the world, then perhaps there is value in cultivating a great amount of… neural diversity." What does Pollan mean—how does consciousness shape our views of the world around us? And what is neural diversity?
2. Follow-up to Question 1: Pollan writes that children approach reality with the wide-eyed "astonishment of an adult on psychedelics." Is he serious? What is he referring to?
3. Other than LSD or mushrooms, Pollan says we can also achieve neural diversity through meditation and prayer. Have you ever had a transcendent experience through either of those means?
4. After psychoactive drugs leave the body and users come off the trip, what kinds of residual effects do many users continue to experience?
5. Have you ever taken psychoactive drugs (LSD, mesc, "shrooms")? If not, do you have an interest in trying them now that you've read Pollan's book?
6. Prior to reading Pollan's account, what were your views on Timothy Leary and the 60s "turn on, tune in, drop out" culture. If you are, say, in your sixties or older, did you consider Leary a boundary-breaking hero … a self-promoter … a dangerous pied piper … a self-indulgent egotist … a daring experimenter?
7. How did Leary derail scientific study of LSD? Would it be fair to say that had Leary's counter-culture not turned LSD into a bad word, we might already be benefiting—right now—from the drug's ability to offer relief from suffering? Or is that leveling unfair blame at Leary?
8. In terms of LSD's medicinal benefits, what have scientists discovered? What do they see as the drug's potential?
9. Talk about how psychoactive drugs work in the brain. Are you able to grasp Pollan's explanations; is the writing lucid enough to cut through the scientific technicalities? Or were you stumped?
10. The author used himself as a guinnea pig. How did he experience the drugs?
11. Your opinion: LSD—good thing … or bad thing?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Uncanny Valley: A Memoir
Anna Wiener, 2020
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780374278014
Summary
In her mid-twenties, at the height of tech industry idealism, Anna Wiener—stuck, broke, and looking for meaning in her work, like any good millennial—left a job in book publishing for the promise of the new digital economy.
She moved from New York to San Francisco, where she landed at a big-data startup in the heart of the Silicon Valley bubble: a world of surreal extravagance, dubious success, and fresh-faced entrepreneurs hell-bent on domination, glory, and, of course, progress.
Anna arrived amidst a massive cultural shift, as the tech industry rapidly transformed into a locus of wealth and power rivaling Wall Street.
But amid the company ski vacations and in-office speakeasies, boyish camaraderie and ride-or-die corporate fealty, a new Silicon Valley began to emerge: one in far over its head, one that enriched itself at the expense of the idyllic future it claimed to be building.
Part coming-of-age-story, part portrait of an already-bygone era, Anna Wiener’s memoir is a rare first-person glimpse into high-flying, reckless startup culture at a time of unchecked ambition, unregulated surveillance, wild fortune, and accelerating political power.
With wit, candor, and heart, Anna deftly charts the tech industry’s shift from self-appointed world savior to democracy-endangering liability, alongside a personal narrative of aspiration, ambivalence, and disillusionment.
Unsparing and incisive, Uncanny Valley is a cautionary tale, and a revelatory interrogation of a world reckoning with consequences its unwitting designers are only beginning to understand. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Anna Wiener is a contributing writer to The New Yorker online, where she writes about Silicon Valley, startup culture, and technology. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, New York, New Republic, and n+1, as well as in Best American Nonrequired Reading 2017. She lives in San Francisco. Uncanny Valley is her first book. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[Wiener] is here to fill out our worst-case scenarios with shrewd insight and literary detail.… Wiener is a droll yet gentle guide.… The real strength of Uncanny Valley comes from her careful parsing of the complex motivations and implications that fortify this new surreality at every level, from the individual body to the body politic (Cover review).
New York Times Book Review
[Uncanny Valley] defamiliarize[s] us with the Internet as we now know it, reminding us of the human desires and ambitions that have shaped its evolution.… Wiener's book is studded with sharp assessments.
Washington Post
The entrenched sexism of Silicon Valley is one of several endemic ills that Anna Wiener examines at unsparingly close range in Uncanny Valley, her absorbing, unsettling, gimlet-eyed memoir of time served in tech…. [T]he world the tech bros are molding is the one we’re all living in. The most valuable question Wiener asks is why we are allowing that to happen.
Boston Globe
The quality of Weiner's on-the-ground observations, coupled with acuity she brings to understanding the psychology at work, makes the book illuminating on a page-by-page basis.… [Wiener's] empathy makes the portrait all the more damning.… [Her] book isn't a warning so much as a lament over the damage done and the damage still to come.
Chicago Tribune
Hyper-self-aware.… Wiener's book transcends the model of a tech-work memoir.… Throughout the memoir, Wiener sustains a piercing tone of crisp, arch observation. It's revelatory to see her navigate the subjects one generally reads about in newspaper headlines, about sexism at Google or the unregulated forums behind events such as Pizzagate.
San Francisco Chronicle
Biting and funny.… Uncanny Valley will speak to you as well as any book about millennial culture. Its humor is a proxy for the despair Wiener feels about tech culture's predicament and her helplessness at doing anything about it.… Uncanny Valley ought to be read by policymakers just as closely as any set of statistics.
Los Angeles Times
Uncanny Valley is a different sort of Silicon Valley narrative, a literary-minded outsider's insider account of an insulated world that isn't as insular or distinctive as it and we assume.… Through [Wiener's] story, we begin to perceive how much tech owes its power, and the problems that come with it, to contented ignorance.
Atlantic
Equal parts enchanting and subversive.… [Wiener's] account of living inside the Bay Area bubble reads like HBO's Silicon Valley filtered through Renata Adler; Wiener is a trenchant cultural cartographer, mapping out a foggy world whose ruling class is fueled by empty scripts: "People were saying nothing, and saying it all the time." The book's author does the very opposite.
Vogue
Beautifully observed.… Someone like Wiener makes for a good spy in the house of tech.… Wiener excels at… the texture of life for people in a particular and pivotal time and place.
Slate
An achingly relatable and sharply focused firsthand account.… [T]he literary texture of Wiener's narrative makes it particularly valuable as a primary document of this moment. Her voice, alternating between cool and detached and impassioned and earnest, boasts an observational precision that is devastating. It is whip smart and searingly funny, too… a feat.
Nation
[A] hyper-detailed, thoroughly engrossing memoir.… At the intersection of exploitative labor, entitled men, and ungodly amounts of money, Wiener bears witness to the fearsome future as it unfolds.
Esquire
[An] insider-y debut memoir that sharply critiques start-up culture and the tech industry.… Wiener is an entertaining writer, and those interested in a behind-the-scenes look at life in Silicon Valley will want to take a look.
Publishers Weekly
[A]bsorbing, fast-paced…. Wiener is a talented writer, and her story will engage fellow millennials…. Insight into the history of Silicon Valley, and the ideologies transforming society, are a bonus that will ensure the book's longevity.
Library Journal
A compelling takedown of the pitfalls of start-up culture, from sexism to the lack of guardrails,Uncanny Valley highlights the maniacal optimism of the twentysomethings behind the screens and the pitfalls of the culture they are building
Booklist
(Starred review) Equal parts bildungsroman and insider report, this book reveals not just excesses of the tech-startup landscape, but also the Faustian bargains and hidden political agendas embedded in the so-called "inspiration culture" underlying a too-powerful industry. A funny, highly informative, and terrifying read.
Kirkus Reviews
(Starred review) [Wiener] is an extremely gifted writer and cultural critic. Uncanny Valley may be a defining memoir of the 2020s, and it's one that will send a massive chill down your spine.
BookPage
Discussion Questions
1. Why does Anna Wiener leave New York and a career in publishing? What are her first impressions of San Francisco and the people who live and work there? What qualifications does she bring to the job in customer support at a data analytics startup? What are her goals?
2. What is the "uncanny valley"? Why does Wiener choose this term for the title of her memoir? What are examples of her experiences that ft the definition?
3. What kind of manager is the CEO of the analytics startup? How does he treat Wiener? How do his employees treat him? What signals does he send with his weekly all-hands meetings? With his insistence on the slogan "Down for the Cause"? What message might the CEO be meaning to send by firing Noah, one of his earliest and most talented hires?
4. Wiener writes, "What was anyone ever talking about? People said things like 'coexecute' and 'upleveling'; they used 'ask' and 'attach' and 'fail' as nouns. They joked about 'adulting.'" How does the language of a workplace reveal its culture and attitudes? How has the language and business culture of Silicon Valley spread?
5. Late one Friday afternoon, Wiener is summoned into a surprise meeting with the CEO of the analytics startup. He questions her abilities and loyalty and tells her, "I don't think we have the same values. I don't even know what your values are." Though it seems like she will be fired, she is given a promotion soon after the meeting. What might have been the CEO's motive? What are his values? How does Wiener come to realize what she values? Can it be said that there are common values among the workers of Silicon Valley?
6. At a company where most employees work remotely, Wiener often feels isolated or lonely. How does she cope with this? How is the life she lives online representative of the impact of the internet and social networks on all our lives? How have relationships, socializing, learning, creating, shopping, et cetera, been changed?
7. What is a meritocracy? What are its benefits and pitfalls? As Wiener explains to a New York friend why she stays at her job, she realizes that there are some things that "Silicon Valley got right." What does she find satisfying and fun about her work?
8. What is the new hire Danilo's vision for technology? Why is it significant? When the secretary of Housing and Urban Development visits the open-source startup to discuss broadening access to home computers and closing the digital literacy gap, Danilo introduces his presentation by saying, "The internet is an accelerant for growth and a dissolver of class walls…. Most of all, it is the ticket to twenty-first century prosperity." Is there evidence that this is true at every level of society?
9. During Wiener's time with the analytics startup, an NSA contractor leaks information that shows the United States government has been spying on private citizens. How does her employer respond to this? Why does her manager tell her, "We're the good guys? "What happened during the 2016 presidential campaign that brought big data's flaws and its power into the open?
10. What is it like for Wiener and other women working at mostly male tech companies ?How do her employers respond when Wiener asks for higher pay and more equity? When she reported blatant sexual harassment? How do men and women differ in their explanations of why there aren't more women working in Silicon Valley startups? What attributes might women bring to these workplaces that would improve both profits and quality of life?
11. Who are the people who support Wiener or influence her decisions? How do her friendships with men, as well as her relationship with Ian, help her become acclimated to Silicon Valley and the culture of tech startups? What does she learn from Noah? From Patrick?
12. How is work-life balance defined and practiced at the open-source startup? What are the mandatory parties, trips, and other, sometimes silly, team-building and social events meant to accomplish? How is freedom defined and achieved? Is the corporate environment at each of Wiener's companies more culture or cult?
13. What do many tech startups have in common with regard to their origins? Who are the founders? How are they initially funded? Who are early hires and what incentives are they offered? How do these companies respond to setbacks? To success? To critical issues like diversity, privacy, security, and abuse of their platforms?
14. What have been the consequences of "scale" for the corporations of Silicon Valley? For the city of San Francisco and its long time residents? What solutions have been proposed for problems with housing and homelessness, transportation, and so on, caused by explosive growth and imbalance of wealth?
15. In 2018, after five years in Silicon Valley, Wiener exercises her stock options and resigns from the open-source startup. What is the basis for this decision? How does the aftermath of the 2016 election affect her and the corporations of Silicon Valley? As she reflects on her time spent working at tech startups, what does she see as the highs and lows? What are issues she believes need to be addressed? What might she see as the future of silicon valley as represented by her former CEO, her coworkers, and her managers?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
top of page (summary)
Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity
Peggy Orenstein, 2020
HarperCollins
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062666970
Summary
Peggy Orenstein’s Girls & Sex broke ground, shattered taboos, and launched conversations about young women’s right to pleasure and agency in sexual encounters. It also had an unexpected effect on its author…
Orenstein realized that talking about girls is only half the conversation.
Boys are subject to the same cultural forces as girls—steeped in the same distorted media images and binary stereotypes of female sexiness and toxic masculinity—which equally affect how they navigate sexual and emotional relationships.
In Boys & Sex, Peggy Orenstein dives back into the lives of young people to once again give voice to the unspoken, revealing how young men understand and negotiate the new rules of physical and emotional intimacy.
Drawing on comprehensive interviews with young men, psychologists, academics, and experts in the field, Boys & Sex dissects so-called locker room talk; how the word "hilarious" robs boys of empathy; pornography as the new sex education; boys’ understanding of hookup culture and consent; and their experience as both victims and perpetrators of sexual violence.
By surfacing young men’s experience in all its complexity, Orenstein is able to unravel the hidden truths, hard lessons, and important realities of young male sexuality in today’s world.
The result is a provocative and paradigm-shifting work that offers a much-needed vision of how boys can truly move forward as better men. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 1961
• Where—Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
• Education—B.A., Oberlin College
• Awards—(see Recognition below)
• Currently—lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, California
Peggy Orenstein is an American essayist and author of nonfiction books. A native of Minneapolis, Minnesota, she attended Oberlin College where she earned a B.A.
After college, she moved to New York City, where she worked as an associate editor at "Esquire," later acquiring senior editing positions at Manhattan, Inc. and 7 Days. In 1988, after moving to San Francisco, California, she became managing editor of Mother Jones and, in 1991, a writer and producer at Farallon Films. She is married to filmmaker Steven Okazaki. They have a daughter and live in San Francisco's Bay Area.
Books
♦ 2020 - Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity
♦ 2016 - Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape
♦ 2011 - Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl
Culture
♦ 2007 - Waiting for Daisy: A Tale of Two Continents, Three Religions, Five Infertility Doctors, an Oscar, an Atomic Bomb, a Romantic Night and One Woman's Quest to Become a Mother
♦ 2000 - Flux: Women on Sex, Work, Love, Kids and Life in a Half-Changed World
♦ 1994 - Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self Esteem, and the Confidence Gap
Other
A contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, Orenstein has also written for the Los Angeles Times, Vogue, Elle, More, Mother Jones, Slate, O: The Oprah Magazine, New York Magazine and The New Yorker.
She has contributed commentaries to NPR’s All Things Considered. Her articles have been anthologized multiple times, including in The Best American Science Writing.
She has been a keynote speaker at numerous colleges and conferences and has been featured on, among other programs, Nightline, Good Morning America, Today Show, NPR’s Fresh Air and Morning Edition and CBC’s As It Happens.
Recognition
In 2012, Columbia Journalism Review named Orentstein one of its "40 women who changed the media business in the past 40 years."
She has been recognized for her "Outstanding Coverage of Family Diversity," by the Council on Contemporary Families and received a Books For A Better Life Award for Waiting for Daisy. Her work has also been honored by the Commonwealth Club of California, the National Women’s Political Caucus of California and Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Additionally, she has been awarded fellowships from the United States-Japan Foundation and the Asian Cultural Council. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/3/2016 .)
Book Reviews
Orenstein’s Boys & Sex is a natural follow-up to her 2016 best seller Girls & Sex. The young men we meet here tend to be hyperarticulate—to the extent that I was initially skeptical of their eloquence…. However unexpected it is, though, the boys’ willingness and ability to share is also decidedly eye-opening ... Every few pages, the boy world cracks open a little bit like that…. To her credit, Orenstein acknowledges her biases. And, through story after story, she forced me to see mine: I was wrong to presume that young men couldn’t be beautifully well spoken and lucid about issues of love and sex. In fact, that assumption is so common, it’s at the root of our problems.
Lauren Smith Brody - New York Times Book Review
A sobering look at the landscape in which young men are growing up—and an invitation for the grown-ups in their lives to offer a lot more support and direction.
Chicago Tribune
To be clear, none of these subjects are new, and men who read this book might not learn anything revolutionary. What Orenstein does excellently, however, is condense, clarify, and draw out the perspectives of the boys and men that she interviewed—their voices, interspersed with her own, lift the book up, hopefully showing readers that they are not alone in their experiences…. The book’s strength lies in Orenstein’s ability to summarize biting, salient points that, even if they don’t come as a shock to some readers, are nonetheless reemphasized clearly…. [A] valuable addition to the litany of books out there discussing what, exactly, is happening with the youth these days.
Harvard Crimson
Through a combination of extensive interviews with young men and sociological research, the book seeks to move beyond the space of think pieces written by men and actually include them in the conversation. It gives readers a digestible overview of the problem…. In between introducing terms like "feminist fuckboy" and "Golden Dick Syndrome," the book also tells stories of boys that are largely neglected in society’s sex conversations…. Most moving are the stories of young men who are victims of abuse, how it often comes as a result of their fears of straying from gender expectations…. These narratives further complicate Orenstein’s problem and make the book a more interesting read…. What I came away understanding is that regardless of how a boy identifies, he is probably confused…. I believe people of all ages can benefit from reading Orenstein’s book and that it can inspire change for the better for all.
Columbia Journal
[Orenstein] trains her expert eye on the world of adolescent boys, and the unique set of challenges that young men are facing today. Boys & Sex is not just a candid and often devastating view into the lives of real high school and college boys right now; it's an affirmation of hope, and an exercise in the power of listening.
Salon
(Starred review) [C]candid and fascinating portrait of young American masculinity.… Expertly written and sometimes disturbing, but always informative, Orenstein’s latest is a valuable reference for parents of teenage boys and young men.
Publishers Weekly
By interviewing young men and collecting data for two years, Orenstein developed insights into her subjects' ideas of masculinity and how society can steer young men away from misogynistic patterns.… A thought-provoking read for all interested in gender studies. —Emily Bowles, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison
Library Journal
(Starred review) [A] welcome forum for exploring "a hunger for more guidance about growing up, hooking up, and finding love in a new era." A highly constructive analysis that provides many topics for exploration and discussion by parents and others who interact with boys.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. William Pollack believes there is a "boy code" that "trains young men to see masculinity in opposition to, and adversarial toward, femininity: a tenuous, ever-shifing position that must be continuously policed" (13). Do you agree? If so, why do you think masculinity is defined so narrowly? If you disagree with Pollack's statement, how would you define today's model for masculinity?
2. Orenstein and the young men she interviews talk about the use of the world "hilarious." What does that word cover up? Why do boys use it? What are some ways to promote more emotionally intelligent responses from boys… and men?
3. Talk about the male use of porn and how it affects their understanding of and expectations for sex. What about the frequent use of violent rape in popular culture—especially in TV shows and movies. Does that have an impact on young (or older) males' thinking about intimate relationships?
4. Talk about the hookup culture? What do you think has caused this evolution in male/female relationships? How does the idea of hook-ups line up with the values of so-called conventional masculinity? What do you think of Wyatt? What does it mean to be a "feminist fuckboy"?
5. How difficult is the path for young gay and trans people? How has society changed, or not changed, when it comes to social queerness? To what extent are younger people more open to gender preferences that don't align with traditional views?
6. What are the pressures that young black men experience on campuses? Did anything surprise you regarding their views on attending predominantly white educational institutions? Why were, or why weren’t, you surprised by what you read?
7. How do we create so-called "good guys"? What, in fact, does it mean to be a good guy? Why do some young men see themselves as not that bad, even when their behavior falls short. How do come of the young men who Orenstein interviews feel about, or understand, coercion?
8. How can we help young men understand the concept of "meaningful consent" in their sexual relations. What do they need to know?
9. In what ways can young men be encouraged to perform their own emotional labor? How do we increase a
young man’s emotional intelligence—or make him aware that being attuned to emotional intelligence isn’t a
bad thing—or a sign of weakness? How do we break the cycle of women being the ones who do emotional labor?
(Questions adapted from the HarperCollins teaching guide.)