arbara
Ehrenreich's articles, reviews and essays have been widely published.
She received the Sydney Hillman Award for Journalism and a Brill's
Content "Honorable Mention" (1999) for a chapter of her book, "Nickel
and Dimed," (Owl Books, 2002) which appeared in Harper's in January
1999. A second essay entitled "Maid to Order," which grew out of her
research for this book, was also published in Harper's (2000).
Ms. Ehrenreich is the author of "Blood Rites: Origins and
History of the Passions of War" (Metropolitan, 1997) and a collection
of essays entitled "The Worst Years of Our Lives: Irreverent Notes
from a Decade of Greed" (Random House Inc., 1990). She also wrote
"Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class" (Pantheon Books,
1989), which was nominated for a National Book Critics' Award in 1989;
"The Snarling Citizen" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1995); "The Hearts of
Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment" (Anchor
Books/Doubleday, 1983); "The American Health Empire: Power, Profits
and Politics" (Vintage Books, 1971), with John Ehrenreich; "Witches,
Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers" (Feminist Press,
1972); "For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts' Advice to Women"
(Anchor Press, 1978), with Deirdre English; "Re-Making Love: The
Feminization of Sex" (Random House Inc., 1986), with Elizabeth Hess
and Gloria Jacobs; "The Mean Season: The Attack on Social Welfare"
(Pantheon Books, 1987), with Frances Fox Piven, Richard Cloward, and
Fred Block; and a novel, "Kipper's Game" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux,
1993). She has most recently co-edited a collection of essays with
Arlie Russell Hochschild called "Global Woman" (Metropolitan, 2002).
Her essay in Harper's "Welcome to Cancerland" was a finalist for a
National Magazine Award in 2003.
Ms. Ehrenreich has a Phd in Biology from The Rockefeller
University and has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards,
including a Ford Foundation Award for Humanistic Perspectives on
Contemporary Society (1982), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1987-88) and a
grant for Research and Writing from the John D. and Catherine T.
MacArthur Foundation (1995). She shared the National Magazine Award
for Excellence in Reporting (1980) and has received honorary degrees
from Reed College, the State University of New York at Old Westbury,
the College of Wooster in Ohio, John Jay College, UMass-Lowell and La
Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. In 1998 and in 2000 she
taught essay-writing at the Graduate School of Journalism at the
University of California, Berkeley.
In this ambitious work, Barbara Ehrenreich offers a daring explanation for
humans' propensity to wage war. Rather than approach the subject from a
physiological perspective, pinpointing instinct or innate aggressiveness as
the violent culprit, she reaches back to primitive man's fear of predators
and the anxieties associated with life in the food chain. To deal with the
reality of living as prey, she argues that blood rites were created to
dramatize and validate the life-and-death struggle. Jumping ahead to the
modern age, Ehrenreich brands nationalism a more sophisticated form of blood
ritual, a phenomenon that conjures similar fears of predation, whether in
the form of lost territory or the more extreme ethnic cleansing. Blood
Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War may not offer a cure
for human aggression, but the author does present a convincing argument for
the difficulties associated with achieving peace. --This text refers to the
Hardcover edition.
From Library
Journal
Social critic and Time magazine essayist Ehrenreich (The Worst Years of Our
Lives, LJ 4/15/90) turns her attention here to anthropology, delving into
the causes of man's age-old interest in war. Her remarkable thesis is that
primitive peoples were defined not so much by a killer predatory instinct as
by their role as prey for other animals. Social constructs such as war and
ritual sacrifice then developed as ways to reenact the primal emotions of
being prey?the terror of facing a hungry beast. Her thesis is fascinating,
and the anthropological exposition is well written and convincing, if mainly
speculative. Ehrenreich's last section, which uses scattered examples from
modern history to illustrate the "sacralization" of war, is also intriguing
(if somewhat less convincing). Recommended for both public and academic
libraries.?Robert Persing, Univ. of Pennsylvania Lib., Philadelphia
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to the
Hardcover edition.
arbara
Ehrenreich's articles, reviews and essays have been widely published.
She received the Sydney Hillman Award for Journalism and a Brill's
Content "Honorable Mention" (1999) for a chapter of her book, "Nickel
and Dimed," (Owl Books, 2002) which appeared in Harper's in January
1999. A second essay entitled "Maid to Order," which grew out of her
research for this book, was also published in Harper's (2000).
