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WHAT WINNERS WON'T TELL YOU

LESSONS FROM A LEGENDARY DEFENDER

Fans of Jenkins on and off the field will take much pleasure in this action-packed account of gridiron life.

Thoughtful memoir by a football great.

The 14th overall pick in the 2009 draft out of Ohio State, Jenkins started his NFL career with the New Orleans Saints, and he refused the team’s first contract offer until finally signing for a then-impressive $19 million for five years: “This was my first business decision: start training camp on time and accept whatever deal they offered or hold out until I was paid my worth.” Never shy of speaking his mind, he played for 13 seasons for the Saints, the Philadelphia Eagles, and then the Saints again, attracting controversy late in his career raising his fist in a Black Power salute during the national anthem. On the field, Jenkins proved to be one of the best defensive backs in the NFL, a three-time Pro Bowler and two-time Super Bowl winner. The best parts of his memoir are his play-by-play memories of important games, as well as an insider’s account of the unexpectedly complex work required in training, especially for a rookie (“a player must learn to play at a high enough rate of speed to challenge their limits with the sobriety of mind to keep from putting their teammates in compromising situations”). Though he started off slow at his rookie camp, Jenkins survived the first roster cut, unlike a couple of the showoffs who thought they knew better than the veterans and coaching staff—a valuable lesson for any player, from Pop Warner kids to would-be NFL stars. Other lessons come fast and furious: “Having a corner that can take out the opposition’s top wideout is a premium for any defense”; “When you get a takeaway in the red zone, they essentially count for double.” Jenkins closes with his decision to retire in 2020, satisfied that “I had given that last chapter of my life everything I had.”

Fans of Jenkins on and off the field will take much pleasure in this action-packed account of gridiron life.

Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2023

ISBN: 9781668004494

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023

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  • New York Times Bestseller

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TANQUERAY

A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.

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  • New York Times Bestseller

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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MARK TWAIN

Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.

A decidedly warts-and-all portrait of the man many consider to be America’s greatest writer.

It makes sense that distinguished biographer Chernow (Washington: A Life and Alexander Hamilton) has followed up his life of Ulysses S. Grant with one of Mark Twain: Twain, after all, pulled Grant out of near bankruptcy by publishing the ex-president’s Civil War memoir under extremely favorable royalty terms. The act reflected Twain’s inborn generosity and his near pathological fear of poverty, the prime mover for the constant activity that characterized the author’s life. As Chernow writes, Twain was “a protean figure who played the role of printer, pilot, miner, journalist, novelist, platform artist, toastmaster, publisher, art patron, pundit, polemicist, inventor, crusader, investor, and maverick.” He was also slippery: Twain left his beloved Mississippi River for the Nevada gold fields as a deserter from the Confederate militia, moved farther west to California to avoid being jailed for feuding, took up his pseudonym to stay a step ahead of anyone looking for Samuel Clemens, especially creditors. Twain’s flaws were many in his own day. Problematic in our own time is a casual racism that faded as he grew older (charting that “evolution in matters of racial tolerance” is one of the great strengths of Chernow’s book). Harder to explain away is Twain’s well-known but discomfiting attraction to adolescent and even preadolescent girls, recruiting “angel-fish” to keep him company and angrily declaring when asked, “It isn’t the public’s affair.” While Twain emerges from Chernow’s pages as the masterful—if sometimes wrathful and vengeful—writer that he is now widely recognized to be, he had other complexities, among them a certain gullibility as a businessman that kept that much-feared poverty often close to his door, as well as an overarchingly gloomy view of the human condition that seemed incongruous with his reputation, then and now, as a humanist.

Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.

Pub Date: May 13, 2025

ISBN: 9780525561729

Page Count: 1200

Publisher: Penguin Press

Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025

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