Paper Trail: Common Sense in Uncommon Times

by Ellen Goodman

Paper Trail journeys through an era that has been golden in its advances and bleak in its disappointments. In a voice both reasoned and impassioned, Ellen Goodman makes sense of the cultural debates that have captured our attention and sometimes become national obsessions. She wrestles with the close-to-the-bone issues of abortion, working mothers and gay marriage, the struggles for civil liberties and equal rights, and the moral complexity of assisted suicide and biotech babies.
The lines that separate public and private life dissolve under Goodman's scrutiny as she shows us how Washington politics, Silicon Valley technology and the national media culture infiltrate our jobs, relationships and minds. With the trademark clarity that readers count on, she walks us through the dilemmas posed by new technologies that range from cloning to cell phones and makes us laugh at the vagaries of Viagra and Botox and unreality TV. And in a world that sometimes seems to be stuck on fast forward, she holds on to values as timeless as a family Thanksgiving and a summer porch in Maine.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays

384 pages, Hardcover

First published February 17, 2004

About the author

Ellen Goodman is an American journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist.

Reviews

[Marti · Rating 3 out of 5]

I agreed with her on many topics.

[Maggie]

Ellen Goodman is one of my favorite journalists. However, by the time I got to these articles she'd written some years ago, most of them were no longer current enough to be relevant. It was entertaining to see what her thoughts were (and I generally agreed with her), but wished I'd read them much sooner.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did enjoy reading this book. One thing that was good was that I could stop every two pages and come back whenever I wanted to without missing the storyline since it's just a compilation of articles. I liked and agreed with most of her opinions. Some of the names that she mentioned, I had to look up but that's probably just due to my ignorance.

[Heather Denkmire · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice essays. Nothing earth shattering good or bad.