PositiveThe New RepublicTo Be a Man , a collection of short stories Krauss has published over the course of her career, features a cast of characters similar to those in her novels, most of them well-educated, cosmopolitan Jews, frequent flyers between New York City and Tel Aviv. But the tone, particularly in the more recent stories, such as Switzerland and To Be a Man is decidedly more jaded, and the collection as a whole might be read as a rejoinder to the earlier criticisms, proof that she has put away childish things and is ready to grapple with the ugly, cruel, and irredeemable aspects of adult life. To be a man, the book suggests, is to be capable of terrifying violence. What Lorentzen describes as her \'cuddly portraits of aging men\' have been replaced by figures considerably more sinister ... a sustained exploration of gender roles and their destructive consequences ... One thing her collection seems keen to emphasize is the role the women’s desires play in exposing them to the subjugating force of men, desires that would appear to render them complicit in their own victimization ... Repeatedly throughout the collection, women regard sexual intimacy with aggressive men as a strategy for appropriating their power; they long to get as close as they can, not because they want to be with, but because they want to be these me ... Trying to stop the violence of men, she suggests, is like trying to stop the sea from breaking against the shore. Some readers will no doubt find this final note of fatalism disappointing—a refusal of the responsibility to take a stronger political stance. To others, Krauss’s evocation of a power so awful and ubiquitous that no act of creative magic can diminish its force will seem the very mark of her maturity.
George Anders
MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewWhile You Can Do Anything and A Practical Education supply useful talking points in support of the financial viability of studying the liberal arts, they may arouse more fear than hope ... While Anders, a contributing writer at Forbes magazine, clearly wants the best for recent liberal arts graduates, his pep talk often consists of rebranding the treacherous market conditions of the 21st century as part of a thrilling new frontier ...somehow it seems unlikely that his analogy to white-water rafting will get them excited to send out yet another batch of cover letters and résumés ...also raise hard questions about who exactly can turn a liberal arts degree into a successful career.
Mark Greif
RaveThe Los Angeles Review of BooksGreif wants to meddle in our lives, not just for the sake of the collective good, but for the sake of the individual, for your sake, to make sure that you do the serious thinking necessary to achieve self-fulfillment...Advising his readers on how to lead their best lives, Greif can sound like a perversely sophisticated inspirational thinker or self-help author ... The masterful ease with which Greif escorts his readers through the steps of his arguments can sometimes obscure his constant jumps from one genre of discourse to another.
