Fierce, candid reading.
A freelance travel journalist drops out of the rat race to spend a year visiting every national park in the U.S.
At 32, Pennington walked away from an unfulfilling job as an assistant to Los Angeles executives to embark on the wilderness tour of her dreams. “I had grown weary of spending my waking hours managing the lives of other, more successful people,” she writes. The author outfitted a minivan with a mattress and all the “creature comforts” she could cram inside and headed to her first stop in Joshua Tree National Park. There she encountered her first obstacles: worries over personal safety and her ability to handle the adventure she had chosen. Gradually, deeper anxieties involving the inner “feral child” who had felt abandoned by her parents began to emerge. Pennington believed that the natural world that had saved her from despair once before would help her find balance, but her obsession with pushing limits and the unexpected onset of the Covid-19 pandemic weeks after she started left her feeling more vulnerable than she expected. The journey—which took her all over the continental U.S., Hawaii, Alaska, and the Virgin Islands—revealed that a relationship she thought would lead to marriage had been a union of incompatible opposites. Forced to confront the loneliness she feared, Pennington continued her travels to the end despite the mounting personal uncertainties, the risks posed by the pandemic, and the emotional health that made her feel like she could “no longer trust the narrative of [her] own mind.” The author’s unflinching honesty and the boldness of her inner and outer journeys are the two great strengths of a book that sometimes overreaches with too-florid natural descriptions. Despite this flaw, the memoir still succeeds in offering a moving portrait of a woman who came into her own by learning to let go.
Fierce, candid reading.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9781542039710
Page Count: 268
Publisher: Little A
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2022
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
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