Press, Eyal

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Press, Eyal

PERSONAL:

Son of Shalom (a doctor) and Carla Press.

CAREER:

Writer.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) Uncivil War: Race, Civil Rights & the Nation, introduction by Derrick Bell, Nation Press (New York, NY), 1995.

Absolute Convictions: My Father, a City, and the Conflict That Divided America, Henry Holt (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to periodicals, including American Prospect, New York Times Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, and the Nation.

SIDELIGHTS:

Eyal Press is the son of immigrants to the United States—his father a gynecologist and abortion doctor, his mother a Holocaust survivor. Press is a contributing writer to the Nation, and also contributes to a number of other periodicals, including American Prospect, New York Times Magazine, and the Atlantic Monthly. Press edited his first book, Uncivil War: Race, Civil Rights & the Nation, in 1995.

Press then published a memoir, Absolute Convictions: My Father, a City, and the Conflict That Divided America, in 2006. The account is part a memoir of his father's experience as an abortion doctor in Buffalo, New York, and the trauma his family suffered when domestic terrorism hit them. A close friend of Press's father, Dr. Barnett Slepian, also an abortion provider, was murdered in his house by a religious extremist and antiabortionist, James Kopp, in October, 1998. Police warned Press's father that it was likely that he too would be a target. Press covers the personal side of his family's attempts to cope with this fear, as well as the national debate on abortion and reproductive rights in the United States.

Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow, writing in the Village Voice, called Press "a scrupulous reporter," adding that he "is more comfortable with facts and political commentary than with feelings and storytelling. In emotional territory, he resorts to cliché … and his descriptive prose often seems forced." Tuhus-Dubrow conceded, however, that the personal recollections in the account are "sufficiently well executed." Tuhus-Dubrow concluded: "Ironically, if there's a lacuna in this book, it's that the pro-choice argument is not spelled out in its full complexity. Press doesn't cite the most eloquent pro-choice partisans—such as his Nation colleague Katha Pollitt—to explain why abortion can be the moral option for women and for a society with limited resources." Eleanor Cooney, reviewing the memoir in Mother Jones, noticed that Press has "an impressive propensity for investigation." Cooney remarked that he "goes beyond simple memoir to search for the tipping point between moral rhetoric and cold-blooded murder."

A contributor to Publishers Weekly mentioned that "more insight into his father's experience would have enhanced the story." The same contributor, nevertheless, called Absolute Convictions an "incisive account" and "a gripping read." Booklist contributor Vanessa Bush agreed that the memoir is a "fascinating account." Bush concluded her review by saying that "this compelling book offers a personal and multilayered perspective on all sides of the abortion debate." A critic writing in Kirkus Reviews remarked that the memoir is "an important, though partisan, history of an issue that has polarized the nation." Suzanne T. Poppema, reviewing the book in Conscience, said that the memoir "is an elegantly written and thoroughly researched account," adding that "Press does a wonderful job of laying out the significance of his parents' background in Israel, that of survivors of the Holocaust and warriors for the newly established country." Poppema commented, though, that "Press clearly respects his father's integrity and courage. He keeps the reader at such a distance from the whole family, though, that one never gets a good sense of how the family feels—how it manages to cope with the dangers, hatred, harassment and fear, with not knowing whether one's father or husband is next on the list of murdered abortion workers."

Kevin Boyle, writing in the New York Times Book Review, observed that "Press's emotional balance, admirable though it is, drains his story of some of its drama. Several times he says that a particular incident left him enraged or terrified. But he never quite makes the reader feel that anger or fear." Boyle conceded, however, that "Press's evenhandedness has its advan- tages," adding that "by balancing all those perspectives, Eyal Press manages the extraordinary feat of bringing light to a political issue that for far too long has generated nothing but blistering heat." In an article in the Columbia Journalism Review, Jeff Sharlet claimed: "Wrestling with the theologies, plural, that produce killers such as Kopp requires that we not pathologize people like him but examine them with as much nuance as Press brings to his portrait of Griffin. It's not enough to note, as Press does, that Kopp's thinking was coherent within its own crazy confines. Rather, as reporters we must mix material analysis with religious imagination. We must inhabit, for at least a moment, the souls as well as the minds of killers." Sharlet noted, however, that "although its history of antiabortion activism and violence is hindered by Press's faith in balance, Absolute Convictions remains a useful book, especially in its depiction of the struggle over abortion as a series of intensely local battles rather than a political war of words in Washington. Press is never less than insightful when he examines his home turf through a historical telescope, charting the decline of the city's once-strong labor community and the subsequent rise of a politician named Jimmy Griffin."