Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Coles, Robert - Michelle Huneven (essay date 3 October 1993)

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Michelle Huneven (essay date 3 October 1993)

SOURCE: "Why Ask Why Some People Do Good?" in Los Angeles Times Book Review, October 3, 1993, p. 2.

[In the following essay Huneven applies a critical eye to Coles' writing methods while citing some of the strengths of The Call of Service.]

Robert Coles is a man of dazzling, if not overwhelming accomplishment. A pediatrician and child psychiatrist, he has published over a thousand essays and more than 50 books including biographies of Dorothy Day, Anna Freud, Simone Weil; a five-volume series on "Children in Crisis," plus one book each on the political, moral and spiritual lives of children. His latest work, The Call of Service: A Witness to Idealism, is a frustrating and fascinating study of how service work fits into a life.

The book opens with a conversation between Coles and his father. Laconic, conservative, himself a hard-working volunteer advocate for the elderly poor, the...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Melvin J. Friedman (review date Fall 1982)
   2. Neil Postman (review date 19 January 1986)
   3. Katherine Paterson (review date 2 February 1986)
   4. Jonathan Kellerman (review date 9 February 1986)
   5. New Yorker (review date 10 February 1986)
   6. John Leo (review date 17 March 1986)
   7. Kenneth L. Woodward (review date 6 September 1987)
   8. Jeff Dietrich (review date 13 September 1987)
   9. Fitzhugh Mullan (review date 8 May 1988)
   10. Helen Bevington (review date 26 February 1989)
   11. Francis X. Rocca (review date March 1989)
   12. Iain Bamforth (review date 7-13 July 1989)
   13. Sanford Pinsker (essay date Summer 1989)
   14. Herbert Mitgang (review date 21 November 1990)
   15. Laura Sessions Stepp (review date 23 December 1990)
   16. The New Yorker (review date 7 January 1991)
   17. Virginia C. Hoch (review date 26 August-2 September 1992)
   18. A. J. S. (review date 1993)
   19. Michelle Huneven (essay date 3 October 1993)
   20. Robert A. Sirico (review date 15 November 1993)
   21. Gail Russell Chaddock (review date 9 December 1993)
   22. Ed Walraven (essay date 1994)
   23. Paulina F. Kernberg (review date October 1994)
   24. Richard Bernstein (review date 27 January 1997)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright