A learned but lightly delivered pleasure for fans of the gridiron and its history.
The author of Why We Love Baseball gives us 100 reasons to look forward to football season.
Posnanski is a practiced sportswriter, but here, following his top-50 treatment of baseball, he’s an enthusiast with an uncommonly broad grasp of football history. He opens with a splendid anecdote about Dick Butkus, renowned for smacking into his opponents hard enough to send them into the next zip code. When Raquel Welch, whom Butkus played alongside when he became an actor, professed wonder that people called Butkus mean, a crewmember replied, “Don’t pick up a football.” The author, old enough to remember when football was a Sunday-only televised sport, connects to the game at a fan’s level, sometimes elevating it to a religion. As he writes, while biblical scholars credit Jesus with somewhere between 37 and 40 miracles, “football, miraculously, has more.” One, ranking 14th on Posnanski’s 100 list, was the famed “Hail Mary” that Roger Staubach pulled off in December 1975—a pass that, while Staubach didn’t necessarily invent it (Posnanski inserts a brief history that stretches back three more decades), was a last-ditch, desperate temptation of fate that actually worked. Voilà: a miracle, just as when Joe Montana lured an opposing Dallas line into coverage that left his receiver wide open to make a game-closing touchdown after San Francisco came far from behind, all of which Posnanski sets up with the offhand opening, “Joe Montana was on the smaller side, and his arm didn’t wow you, and he seemed a little bit frail”—and yet, a miracle, and pick no. 11 of 100. It would spoil the fun to reveal the No. 1 moment, but suffice it to say that those readers who witnessed it will surely share Posnanski’s appreciation.
A learned but lightly delivered pleasure for fans of the gridiron and its history.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9780593475522
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
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