SOURCE: West, Kathleene. Review of Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons. Prairie Schooner 61, no. 4 (winter 1987): 121-23.

In the following review, West praises Hacker's treatment of personal heroics, calling Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons “wise, funny, brave, and beautifully written.”

What does it take to be a hero in the 1980s? Contemporary American culture's obsession with temperamental rock stars and prima donna quarterbacks blurs the distinction between heroism and temporary fame, and President Reagan's proclamation of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North as a national hero is as perplexing as the Newsweek inclusion of a KKK grandmother in their “A Day in the Life of America.” It is an appealing proposition that, in order to generate heroes of a more elevated type, there should be a large-scale reexamination of individual, personal heroics, on the order of Walt Whitman's dictum, “To have great poets, there must be...