Books, Arts & Manners: Village Person

It Takes a Village and Other Lessons Children Teach Us, by Hillary Rodham Clinton (Simon & Schuster, 318 pp; $20)

HILLARY Rodham Clinton chose the title of her new book from the African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child,” because, she says, the proverb “offers a timeless reminder that children will thrive only if their families thrive and if the whole of society cares enough to provide for them.” “Nothing,” she concludes, “is more important to our shared future than the well-being of children. For children are at our core— not only as vulnerable beings in need of love and care but as a moral touchstone amidst the complexity and contentiousness of modern life.” As an antidote to that complexity and contentiousness, Mrs. Clinton offers the folksy image of the village with its nostalgic evocations of a simpler, more harmonious past.

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Elizabeth Fox-Genovese

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It Takes a Village and Other Lessons Children Teach Us, by Hillary Rodham Clinton (Simon & Schuster, 318 pp; $20)

HILLARY Rodham Clinton chose the title of her new book from the African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child,” because, she says, the proverb “offers a timeless reminder that children will thrive only if their families thrive and if the whole of society cares enough to provide for them.” “Nothing,” she concludes, “is more important to our shared future than the well-being of children. For children are at our core— not only as vulnerable beings in need of love and care but as a moral touchstone amidst the complexity and contentiousness of modern life.” As an antidote to that complexity and contentiousness, Mrs. Clinton offers the folksy image of the village with its nostalgic evocations of a simpler, more harmonious past.