Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture (Modern Library Paperbacks) [Paperback]

Katha Pollitt (Author)

Book Description

Series: Modern Library Paperbacks | Publication Date: February 6, 2001

Subject to Debate, Katha Pollitt's column in The Nation, has offered readers clear-eyed yet provocative observations on women, politics, and culture for more than seven years. Bringing together eighty-eight of her most astute essays on hot-button topics like abortion, affirmative action, and school vouchers, this selection displays the full range of her indefatigable wit and brilliance. Her stirring new Introduction offers a seasoned critique of feminism at the millennium and is a clarion call for renewed activism against social injustice.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Pollitt professes to find the cover of this collection of her Nation columns "pretty"; her readers might find it misleading, since the eye on the cover is in sweet soft-focus, while Pollitt's own eye is steely, uncompromising and sharp. In these 88 brief essays, she brilliantly shears away the rhetorical cotton wool that obscures the serious implications of many hot social and political issues of contemporary America abortion, welfare reform, affirmative action, school vouchers, gun rights and control. Unfailingly feminist in her analysis, she is never tendentious and always witty. Nor is she reluctant to turn her gaze close to home, to the gap between the Nation's high-minded principles and its largely lily-white editorial offices, for example, in her discussion of various liberal hypocrisies. Her newly written introduction calls upon feminists at the millennium to kick-start the "stalled revolution" with renewed demands for change that, she says, would further social justice, and themselves transform those who articulate them. If there is anything to regret in this collection, it is that columns written seven years ago remain fresh today, so little progress having been made toward resolving the issues they raise. (Apr.)Forecast: This attractively packaged and affordable collection should prove popular among those whose spirits have been depressed by recent political events and prospects of future recession.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The essays in this collection were originally published in the author's column of the same name in the Nation from 1994 to fall 2000 and follow an earlier collection, Reasonable Creatures: Essays on Women and Feminism. With incisiveness and wit, her spirited essays address contemporary political and social issues, including abortion rights, racism, welfare reform, feminism, and poverty. Pollitt's lively commentaries on the contemporary American scene and the women's movement and her unwavering promotion of social justice will make a refreshing addition to most public libraries and academic collections in journalism and women's studies.
-DPatricia A. Beaber, Coll. of New Jersey Lib., Ewing
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Modern Library (February 6, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679783431
• ISBN-13: 978-0679783435
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.8 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,263,959 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Arguably the best columnist in the United States today, May 2, 2001

By 

[e-mail] (Edmonton, Alberta Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture (Modern Library Paperbacks) (Paperback)

This collection of Pollitt's columns for The Nation shows all her virtues: her considerable wit, her intelligence, her ability to present feminist views in a clear and coherent manner. She has a keen eye for the media's fatuities; its tendency to split the difference and to move to the stronger side, its fear that it will be viewed as too liberal, the fact that most journalists and columnists are male which does not prevent them from whining about how powerful feminists are.

Consider these thoughts on the perniciousness of sports: "Fans say athletics promote values and so they do--the wrong values, like the childish confusion of physical prowess with `character' that is such a salient feature of the O.J. Simpson trial. Sports pervert education, draining dollars from academic programs and fostering anti-intellectualism. They skew the priorities of the young, especially the poor, black young, by offering them the will-o'-the-wisp incentive of a scholarship, physically gifted kids might not be so ready to blow off their schoolwork. Why not give scholarships for art or music instead?"

Or consider this line about funding for the Arts and funding for NASA: "Representative Sonny Bono says he's never met anyone who benefited from public arts funding; well, I've never met anyone who cares what kind of rocks Mars has." How can one not admire a critic who has no patience with the Clintons, but recognizes that Nader's Green Party is a non-starter? How can one not admire a critic who prefers The Man who Loved Children, Song of Solomon, The Assistant, and Tongo-Bungay to the peculiar list drawn up by the Modern Library? Everyone should read a woman who castigates the ponderousness of communitarianism, the bile of a Farrakhan, and the shallowness of a Mary Daly. Everyone should read her, period.

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Katha's The Best, February 9, 2001

By 

Marc Cooper (Woodland Hills, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture (Modern Library Paperbacks) (Paperback)

Long before I worked for The Nation, back in the dark days of the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations, I would rush to the mailbox every week to grab the same magazine. I would immediately scour its contents hoping to find some contribution or another from Katha Pollitt. Now, just when we need Katha the most -- in the days of Bush Jr.-- what a relief it is to know that her column appears every 2 weeks in The Nation. There is simply no columnist around who is always so fresh, so provocative, and so funny (on top of it) as Katha. Unlike many, her arguments are actually thought out BEFORE she puts them in ink. And those arguments, essays and columns are clearly forged in a white-hot fusion of unshakeable radical principle with an unmistakeable humane passion (and compassion). Over the years, as a Nation colleague, I have had what I would call the privilege of engaging is some loud public political polemics with Katha. And I can say that I am lucky I have survived them! Katha is the most formidable of opponents because she is relentless in pursuing her arguments and lines of inquiry to their deepest and most authentic political implications. If you have not yet become a regular reader of Katha's work, then picking up this new collection will allow you to catch up with the rest of us and get up to speed. if you are already an initiate, re-reading these essays will be a chance to re-discover what a treasure we have in Katha Pollitt.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read for reasonable creatures, February 18, 2001

By 

New York Reader (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture (Modern Library Paperbacks) (Paperback)

This is without a doubt the best book of political writing I've read since ..."Reasonable Creatures." It's amazing to me how incisive and stimulating and to the point even the older pieces in this collection are. Pollitt is nondogmatic, witty, profound, eye-opening, and unafraid to take stands controversial in her own liberal or radical camp. You'll think, you'll learn, you'll agree or disagree but always enjoy it, if you buy this book.