Hirshman documents behind-the-scenes details, political maneuvering, evidence that was presented or suppressed, truths that became apparent long after decisions went into effect, and how these developments affect current events. The unabated, continuing public outcry against sexual harassment is a reminder that resolution is long overdue.
In thirteen strong chapters, Hirshman examines major US events in great detail and with a storyteller’s panache ... What’s striking throughout Reckoning, along with how history repeats, is, once again, Hirshman’s tone: combative and pragmatic but also rather simplistic...The practical advice only goes so far ... I read Reckoning seeking the concrete advice Hirshman offered in Get to Work. But I finished the book wanting more counsel and less storytelling.
The history recounted in Reckoning is buoyed along by a sense of righteous inevitability ... Hirshman has written a timely and readable volume on an urgent subject, but her disdain for anyone she deems to be the wrong kind of feminist can be so potent that it’s corrosive ... Hirshman gestures at some of these complexities, including the trade-offs liberal women have had to confront, especially when it comes to the piggishness of certain male Democrats ... The strongest parts of Reckoning are where Hirshman gives credit to the black women in addition to Hill who were central to the movement ... Reckoning glosses over an expansive definition of physical assault without peering too closely at its expansive law-and-order implications ... anyone seeking a deeper understanding of why the current moment has been such a long time coming may wish that she had done a little more reckoning of her own.
... [an] elegantly written social history ... But Hirshman’s triumphalist vision may underestimate the continuing dilemma of low-wage (and other) workers caught between piggish male supervisors and economic exigencies. Not everyone has the wherewithal to walk away or to sue. Still, Hirshman has performed a valuable task in unearthing the backstory of sexual harassment law ... Reckoning is ambitious and provocative, if not always fully convincing, in its efforts to link changing attitudes toward sexual harassment to larger philosophical and political debates over gender and sex.
This is not a book with an overarching thesis; instead, Hirshman weaves together a story of how harassment became A Thing and how society reached its recent #MeToo tipping point. Reckoning is at its most satisfying when Hirshman tells stories that 2019 readers might not know, like the early, trailblazing cases brought by women of color that set the stage for the harassment battles of the 1980s, ’90s and beyond. These sections let one see how the same people, ideas and roadblocks pop up decade after decade ... Hirshman is clearly in command of the material, giving concise explanations of complicated court cases. It’s the kind of command that allows her to be conversational, even casual — for better and for worse. Mixed liberally throughout are irony-dripping jokes, acid asides and grand pronouncements. I found myself imagining Hirshman standing before a fireplace in a mahogany-and-leather-filled study, dictating her book into a recorder, gesturing grandly, Scotch in hand ... Hirshman as a narrator needs to be taken with a shaker or two of salt. On the one hand, it can be quite charming when she gives you a conspiratorial nudge and lets you know exactly what she thinks of a particular court ruling. On the other, that kind of nudging means that Hirshman is not writing a detached, analytical view of history. She is clearly biased toward — or against — many of the figures she writes about ... Hirshman’s penchant for big statements also damages her credibility.
... inspiring but not unrealistically optimistic ... Those seeking a tightly constructed narrative about how #MeToo became a cultural phenomenon will find it here, along with a celebration of the bold women who stood up for themselves to earn legal victories against harassment.
