No Safe Place: The Legacy of Family Violence

After briefly describing episodes of childhood abuse previously recounted in her 1978 book Mommy Dearest, as well as her 1981 stroke and subsequent recovery, Crawford goes on to look at the various reactions of abused and neglected children. They cover, she notes, ``a wide range of dysfunctional behaviors.'' Very wide: homelessness, suicide, racism, overeating and unnecessary surgery are just a few of the 27 spokes on her ``survivor's wheel.'' Here she projects childhood trauma into almost every conceivable societal or personal evil. It's already a stretch to cover these myriad of ills in such a short space and the text is further thinned by tangential subjects. So while Crawford may be perfectly good and right, she is rarely new or substantive. (``Unsterile, shared needles and unprotected sexual encounters spread AIDS.'') Likewise, her recommendations are naively simplistic, whether on homelessness (``People with extra space in their homes could rent a room to someone who might otherwise end up on the street... Apartment projects could be cleaned up, organized for tenant self-government, and reclaimed from drug dealers.'') or alcoholism (``Books are plentiful. Help is readily available if one wants it.''). (Aug.)