The LSJ doesn't often publish reviews of books that rely so heavily on research, but a few months ago they did; evidently I wasn't the only one who read the review and thought it sounded interesting. After waiting three months, I finally received the hold notice and could see what all the fuss was about. A little background, first: Jeffrey Kluger writes for Time and this book, as he acknowledges more than once, grew out of feature stories on sibling relationships tha he wrote for the magazine in 2006 and 2007.
Not surprisingly, then, the book reads a bit like a very long feature story. It's chock full of interviews, longitudinal study results, and other standard research fare. Kluger examines everything from sibling rivalry, to the trajectory of shared substance abuse and teenage pregnancy, to abusive sibling relationships. In places, it's a little dark.This would probably be too much, if not for the generous, and usually very funny, helping of personal anecdotes that Kluger regularly doles out. Dysfunctional in any number of ways, the Kluger clan often serves to illustrate any number of research findings in ways that make the reader both thankful and sorry not to be a member of the troop. As for recommending it? If you enjoy magazine-style features, or have an unquenchable thirst for research about siblings, this is a well-written and certainly informative book.
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