Fiercely partisan, rich in role models.
Rousing tales of courageous workers who dared to fight for better, safer jobs.
In this young readers’ version of Fight Like Hell (2022), Kelly leaves out the chapter on activist sex workers and recasts the rest into individual profiles of 22 organizers and advocates. Giants in the great struggle, like Frances Perkins, Mother Jones, Eugene V. Debs (who ran for president from prison in 1920), and Judy Heumann have entries, and she also includes more recent, lesser-known heroes. The subjects are diverse, including people of color, immigrants, and other people from marginalized groups. Kelly chronicles their triumphs and tragedies and their relentless battles with largely faceless, uniformly hostile bosses. Her rhetoric often takes a fiery turn: “I could feel the heat roll off her words,” she writes about an interview with Jennifer Bates, one of the leaders in a bitter, ongoing struggle against “Jeff Bezos’s goons” to unionize the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. Still, she reminds readers that her most iconic subjects were complex, fallible humans, acknowledging Bayard Rustin’s support for the war in Vietnam, for example, or how César Chávez and Dolores Huerta froze their longtime co-worker Maria Moreno out of the United Farm Workers. A passionate read that would pair well with J. Albert Mann’s Shift Happens (2024), Kelly’s central message shines through. “Collective working-class power is behind every step forward this country has made.”
Fiercely partisan, rich in role models. (source notes) (Nonfiction. 12-16)Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781665937290
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
Catnip for scandal junkies, with a bit of historical perspective stirred in.
A gleefully explicit catalogue of the past century’s headline-grabbing bad behavior.
Aimed at readers who don’t need to be told who Brangelina is but may be hazy on “twisted besties” Leopold and Loeb or even Monica Lewinsky, this edutaining survey presents a wide-angle array of murders, sexual follies, controversial trials, race violence, political corruption and general envelope-pushing from the 1906 killing of Stanford White on. Each of the chronologically arranged entries opens with a capsule “Scoop” followed by a slightly fuller account under a “What Went Down” header. Along with a small black-and-white photo and one or two sidebar quotes, the author tacks on subsequent developments, sometimes-perceptive suggestions about “Why We Still Care” and a short roster of similar incidents in recent history. Though she misspells “Symbionese” and repeatedly awards FDR only three Presidential wins, in general Fryd presents reasonably accurate summaries of events and issues while giving all sides of the more muddled conflicts at least a nod. Additional cred is provided by a teen panel of editorial advisors.
Catnip for scandal junkies, with a bit of historical perspective stirred in. (index) (Nonfiction. 12-16)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-9827322-0-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Zest/Orange Avenue
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of all things martial will echo his “HOOYAH!”—but the troubled aftermath comes in for some attention too.
Abridged but not toned down, this young-readers version of an ex-SEAL sniper’s account (SEAL Team Six, 2011) of his training and combat experiences in Operation Desert Storm and the first Battle of Mogadishu makes colorful, often compelling reading.
“My experiences weren’t always enjoyable,” Wasdin writes, “but they were always adrenaline-filled!” Not to mention testosterone-fueled. He goes on to ascribe much of his innate toughness to being regularly beaten by his stepfather as a child and punctuates his passage through the notoriously hellacious SEAL training with frequent references to other trainees who fail or drop out. He tears into the Clinton administration (whose “support for our troops had sagged like a sack of turds”), indecisive commanders and corrupt Italian “allies” for making such a hash of the entire Somalian mission. In later chapters he retraces his long, difficult physical and emotional recovery from serious wounds received during the “Black Hawk Down” operation, his increasing focus on faith and family after divorce and remarriage and his second career as a chiropractor.
Fans of all things martial will echo his “HOOYAH!”—but the troubled aftermath comes in for some attention too. (acronym/ordinance glossary, adult level reading list) (Memoir. 12-14)Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-250-01643-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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