Marcel Danesi

I was provided an advanced copy of this book by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book had a great premise, and the author's education laid out plans for an excellent argument. However, while I should have caught the reference to Trump's book by the title, this book is basically a treatise about Trump's lying and manipulation by comparing him to other notorious liars, specifically Machiavelli - and as one other reviewer also stated, Trump is nowhere near the intellect of Machiavelli.

This book was repetitive, and I'm honestly exhausted with reading about Trump's lying and manipulating; this book had the potential to be a good examination on the subject as a whole, and instead was determined to use one specific subject and run it into the already tired ground.… (més)

My review of the cool skeleton book should make it clear that non-narrative nonfiction isn't really my cup of tea. But I keep trying, because that's what readers do.

This was actually one of the first manuscripts I worked on at Palgrave. I arrived right in time for the end-of-year crunch, so I was helping editors and EAs on a bunch of lists--though in this case I was only doing formatting and looking out for lyrics, poetry, and block quotes. I hadn't leveled up to permissions checking quite yet. Anyway, I read a few sentences here and there and thought it looked interesting, and then I found this copy on the take shelf and thought I'd check it out. This book published simultaneously in hardback and paperback, which means that it was/is targeted toward a more general audience than strictly researchers, academics, and upper-level grad students. In other words, I could understand it.

It will seem contradictory, but I won't actually say too much about the content--I'm a bit nervous about leaving a substantial review of a book from my own company, even if it's not a book from my list and was published several years ago. So I'll just say three things:

1. I found the first chapter, in which Danesi lays out his thesis, the most interesting part of the book. It had never occurred to me that the mouth to mouth kiss might be a relatively recent phenomenon--and I've been wondering what romance pre-1200s was like ever since.

2. A lot of the books and movies Danesi cited that I'd read and seen were just...very wrong. Plot points, timelines, and emotions were incorrect in ways that hampered Danesi's argument, and two Disney movies were actually mixed up with each other. Disclaimer: I can sometimes remember plots unusually well and I have won Disney Scene-It the only two times I've played. But still. This is an academic book. Research. (2.5 things: One of the author's surveys involved less than 50 people. Seriously. (To be fair, the economics and finance books I acquire are more likely to be more scientific than humanities and social sciences. But I have published books complaining that they're still not scientific enough, either.))

3. This book would have seriously benefited from some beta readers, if not coauthors or contributors, in other departments. Particularly women's studies. There were a few sentences that smelled strongly of MRA.… (més)