Under Pressure by Lisa Damour and related titles

UNDER PRESSURE by Lisa Damour is one of those books that we cannot keep on our shelves, despite owning multiple copies.  Damour, who also wrote Untangled about guiding teenage girls to adulthood, discusses “Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls” in her latest title.  She draws from her experiences as a clinical psychologist and writes in a conversational tone about the issues girls face, especially how anxiety “seems to have spun out of control.” While acknowledging that “anxious feelings are becoming more prevalent among all young people,” she cites research that indicates this is happening at a faster pace for girls.  Damour succinctly contrasts stress (“usually refers to the feeling of emotional or mental strain or tension”) and anxiety (“usually refers to the feeling of fear, dread, or panic”).  There is an entire chapter related to girls at school where she highlights the findings that “teenagers with a stress-build-strength mindset were much less upset by difficult life events … than those with a stress-does-harm mindset” and acknowledges that (1) recovery strategies are highly personal although (2) having one is vital because “intellectual growth depends on doing both hard work and replenishing one’s reserves.”

UNDER PRESSURE contains roughly twenty-five pages of note, plus recommended reading related to EACH chapter for parents and girls (the latter seems more geared to middle school or early high school readers, however).  For more examples of Damour’s thoughts, check out this profile from KQED and her recent New York Times articles:  2/12: How to Help Teens Weather Their Emotional Storms or 2/7:  Why Girls Beat Boys at School and Lose to Them at the Office  or 1/16: How to Help Tweens and Teens Manage Social Conflict

BRAVE, NOT PERFECT by Reshma Saujani is subtitled “Fear Less, Fail More, and Live Bolder.” Saujani, the founder and CEO of Girls Who Code stresses that “boys are taught to be brave, while girls are taught to be perfect” and that results in women who are afraid to fail. In this text, she shares events from her own life, like her 2010 unsuccessful run for Congress, to encourage others to take risks. Additional examples tend to be grounded in popular culture, such as one chapter which refers to Helen Mirren, Chelsea Manning and Taylor Swift. Saujani’s advice is meant to be entertaining and memorable, with sections titled “In a World Full of Princesses, Dare to be a Hot Dog” or “Strategy: Start Before You’re Ready.” However, she makes many serious points: “risky acts – like taking an unpopular stand – might be scary, but they often end up being the ones that are most appreciated and celebrated.” You can read an excerpt here.

 

The Future Is Asian by Parag Khanna

THE FUTURE IS ASIAN is written by Parag Khanna, Managing Partner of FutureMap (a scenario planning and strategic advisory firm) with degrees from Georgetown University and the London School of Economics. Discussing commerce, conflict and culture in the 21st century, Khanna argues that a “megaregion” representing 40% of global GDP is clearly of increasing importance. He begins with a review of Asia’s historically great empires and then praises today’s technocracies, particularly Singapore and China. Offering potential for better understanding due to an Asian perspective (Khanna was born in India and lives in Singapore), the author comments further on the tension between economic growth and individual liberties. Throughout, Khanna encourages readers to focus less on individual countries and more on the interconnectedness “spanning Saudi Arabia to Japan, Russia to Australia, Turkey to Indonesia.” 

This text will certainly be of interest to our students, several of whom were engrossed in the recent CQ Researcher report on China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a project which Khanna describes as “the equivalent of the mid-twentieth-century founding of the United Nations and World Bank plus the Marshall Plan all rolled into one.” In addition, there are chapters on “Why Europe Loves Asia but Not (Yet) Asians” and “Asians in the Americas and Americans in Asia.”  There, Khanna points out that “in 2010, Asia officially outstripped Latin America as the largest source of new immigrants into the United States” and “a quarter of all US businesses are Asian owned.”  The information on international students is also fascinating with identifiable changes – “increasingly taking their US educations back home” – since the start of the Trump presidency. THE FUTURE IS ASIAN is itself based on solid research, containing graphs and statistics, plus extensive notes and an almost twenty-page bibliography.  

Finding Dorothy by Elizabeth Letts

FINDING DOROTHY by Elizabeth Letts is a LibraryReads choice for February 2019 which will definitely appeal to readers of historical fiction and of works by authors like Lisa Wingate, Paula McClain, and Melanie Benjamin. In Letts’ novel, Maud Gage Baum, the widow of L. Frank Baum, is in Hollywood during the 1938-39 filming of The Wizard of Oz, but the story also moves back and forth in time to recount her childhood and married years. It is a fictionalized account filled with real people and events like Maud’s early life near Syracuse, her stint as an undergrad at Cornell and times with her husband in South Dakota and Chicago. As such, the text also offers an informative look at turn of the century America and a more rural time.  In addition, there is a theme of women’s rights – due to connections to Maud’s mother who was a fairly famous suffragette, to dangers of pregnancy, and to later treatment of Hollywood actresses like the young Judy Garland.   

Booklist called Maud “a fascinating character” and I totally concur; I especially enjoyed seeing how elements of her life story may have found their way into Baum’s books. Publishers Weekly gave FINDING DOROTHY a starred review. There are many surprises and much for fans of the movie to enjoy here.