(Penguin, $28)
Here we go again, said Richard Kim in The Nation. Amy Chua, the Yale law professor whose “emotionally sadistic parenting techniques” inspired mothers across America to transform themselves into “tiger moms,” apparently decided she hadn’t spread enough toxicity. The follow-up to her Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother turns out to be so incendiary that it reads less like a work of social science than “an epic feat of trolling.” Written with her husband, it claims to explain the economic and academic success of certain immigrant and religious groups within America. Sure, it might seem reassuring that if you lined up those eight groups they’d “resemble an ’80s Benetton ad.” Unfortunately, Chua and Jed Rubenfeld “traffic in broad stereotypes”—seemingly for no better reason than to stir up trouble.
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The argument doesn’t really hold together, said Olga Khazan in The Atlantic. To prove the superiority of triple-package cultures, the authors cherry-pick anecdotes about immigrant families pushing their children toward success and contrast them with “comical stereotypes” of the self-esteem-boosting parents who supposedly fill America’s white middle class. Worse, Chua and Rubenfeld spend only one chapter describing the downside to growing up in a triple-package household, even though “it’s a pretty big downside”: Anxiety levels and the incidence of depression appear to be higher among immigrants—problems traceable to lower self-esteem. While “most white, middle-class Americans don’t fight for their lives the way triple-package cultures do,” that’s because they can afford to define success not as climbing the income ladder but as achieving happiness. There’s no shame in pursuing a different goal.
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Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
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Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
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The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
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Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
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Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
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Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
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You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
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Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”