From Barnes & Noble
For two reasons, Jonathan Franzen was the most-discussed author of 2001. The first, of course, was the publication of his novel The Corrections, which won critics' plaudits and the National Book Award. And the second, needless to say, was Oprah Winfrey. The controversies stemming from his very brief tenure as an Oprah author reverberate still. In this eclectic collection of essays, Franzen examines not only the book club brouhaha, but maximum-security prisons, the sex-advice industry, and the persistence of loneliness in postmodern America. How to Be Alone contains Franzen's two most famous essays: the moving piece he wrote about his father's struggle with Alzheimer's disease and "the Harper essay," his incisive 1996 view of the precarious state of the American novel.
The New York Times Book Review
[Franzen] starts from the hypothesis, basic to any good novelist's inquiry, that even the simplest, most trivial activities…are riven with complexities, and then proceeds, with exemplary ethical seriousness, grouchy stubbornness and silken wit, to break those complexities down into their moral, psychological and historical components.
From The Critics
In this wise, entertaining collection of essays, the author of the 2001 National Book Award– winning The Corrections treats a wide variety of subjects—Alzheimer's, cigarettes, rotary phones—but he's never far from his central concern, the literary life. Reprinted here is his controversial 1996 Harper's essay on the state of the novel, as well as the story of his famous disinvitation from The Oprah Winfrey Show for seeming, as she put it, "conflicted." But his most poignant (and funny) account of writing's pitfalls and pathologies is "Scavenging," about his years as a struggling fiction writer and the objects that peopled his world: "I wonder, is it possible to imagine a grimmer vision of codependency than the hundreds of hours I logged with sharp strands of copper wire squeezed between my thumb and forefinger, helping my TV with its picture?" Of his reluctance to join the Prozac-satiated multitudes with their "undepressed smiles," he notes, "I seem to myself a person who shrilly hates health." Franzen could seem shrill were his insights on modern life not so keen nor his belief in books so passionate. Author—Eric Wargo
Eric Wargo
In this wise, entertaining collection of essays, the author of the 2001 National Book Award– winning The Corrections treats a wide variety of subjects—Alzheimer's, cigarettes, rotary phones—but he's never far from his central concern, the literary life. Reprinted here is his controversial 1996 Harper's essay on the state of the novel, as well as the story of his famous disinvitation from The Oprah Winfrey Show for seeming, as she put it, "conflicted." But his most poignant (and funny) account of writing's pitfalls and pathologies is "Scavenging," about his years as a struggling fiction writer and the objects that peopled his world: "I wonder, is it possible to imagine a grimmer vision of codependency than the hundreds of hours I logged with sharp strands of copper wire squeezed between my thumb and forefinger, helping my TV with its picture?" Of his reluctance to join the Prozac-satiated multitudes with their "undepressed smiles," he notes, "I seem to myself a person who shrilly hates health." Franzen could seem shrill were his insights on modern life not so keen nor his belief in books so passionate.
Publishers Weekly
Steinberg, a Temple University psychology professor and author (Beyond the Classroom), presents a powerful argument for the importance of parents in shaping emotionally healthy children. Steinberg's philosophy is based on decades of scientific research in the parenting field, and rests on 10 main beliefs that span childhood from infancy to adolescence. From "What You Do Matters" to "You Cannot Be Too Loving" and "Treat Your Child With Respect," Steinberg outlines the core ingredients of successful parenting, addressing common issues and questions all parents face. Although he recognizes the impact of peers and media in children's lives, Steinberg maintains that parents must take responsibility, pointing out that children's decisions are influenced, above all, by those who raise them. Steinberg maintains a thoughtful but instructive tone throughout, offering practical suggestions on topics like establishing rules and limits. Parenting, Steinberg says, is "like building a boat you will eventually launch. The building process is gratifying, but so is launching the boat and seeing that what you've built can handle the seas." Steinberg calls for parents to be involved and respectful as they create an emotionally healthy environment for their children. His slim volume brims with potent messages about the importance and responsibility of good parenting, providing useful guidelines for new parents and a valuable refresher course for veterans. Ultimately, Steinberg maintains, the scientific facts prove there is nothing more important to healthy development than parents who love, guide and respect their children. Agent, Shana Kelly. (May 3) Forecast: Steinberg's latest will satisfy parents of children in infancy through adolescence, and his solid reputation as a parenting expert should help sales. A first serial will run in Parents magazine. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
With so many parenting books out there and so little time for parents to read them, the idea of boiling down child rearing to ten basic principles makes perfect sense. By "synthesizing and communicating what the experts have learned," noted adolescent psychologist Steinberg (Temple Univ.) does just that. Modeling, love, involvement, flexibility, limit setting, independence fostering, consistency, discipline, fairness, and respect are each well explained, with many concrete examples for all age groups. Though Steinberg presents his book as being "based on what scientists who study parenting have learned from decades of systematic research," he does not supply a bibliography. However, his advice still stands, coming from a professor with many years of expertise in his field. Haim Ginott's Between Parent and Child offers similar parenting principles but focuses on how to communicate positively with children. Recommended for all public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/04.]-Maryse Breton, Davis Branch Lib., CA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Of maximum-security prisons, Dumpster diving, and privacy in a technological age: a collection of essays diverse and entertaining by the author of last year's Big Novel, The Corrections. Before The Corrections, which led circuitously to "Oprah Winfrey's disinvitation of me from her Book Club," Franzen was perhaps best known to general readers as the author of an arch, funny, and contrarian essay recounting the reasons for his "despair of the American novel," published in Harper's and thus known among the cognoscenti simply as "the Harper's essay." Revised to be still more arch and no less contrarian, if somewhat less lit-critical, the essay (now called "Why Bother?") is reason enough to fiction lovers in this increasingly "infantilizing" culture to take Franzen's nonfiction out for a spin, though it won't please the academic readers it relentlessly twits in salutary slaps such as: "The therapeutic optimism now raging in English literature departments insists that novels be sorted into two boxes: Symptoms of Disease (canonical work from the Dark Ages before 1950) and Medicine for a Happier and Healthier World ("the work of women and of people from nonwhite or nonhetero cultures"). The other essays, most previously published in Details, the New Yorker, and elsewhere, deliver sufficient bang for the book, though none quite stands up to the centerpiece. Some of them, such as a perceptive study of the Post Office at work, manage to be quite timely even as they bear a few signs of age; others get a little weird, as when Franzen observes that smoking cigarettes serves, at least in his case, "to become familiar with apocalypse, to acquaint myself with the contours of its terrors, to make theworld's potential death less strange and so a little less threatening." None, however, is predictable, and all bear Franzen's trademark sensibility of smiling, even though scared silly, in the face of doom. Smart, solid, and well-paced: a pleasure for Franzen's many remaining admirers.
