A sublime amalgam of personal recollections and meticulous wartime biography brimming with reverence and brio.
In this memoir/biography, a general’s grandson reflects on how his life was enhanced by his grandfather’s stories.
Born into a military family whose service goes as far back as the Mexican War in 1846, author and blogger Van Ness offers tales about his grandfather’s combat experiences during World War II. Running alongside these lucid anecdotes are tales of the author’s own legacy growing up surrounded by his grandfather’s artifacts, medals, and uniforms and his own tenure in the military as a physician. Van Ness grew up as the youngest grandson of West Point graduate and two-star major general John Anderson and the son of a decorated naval officer. As a child, the author would periodically sleep over at his grandparents’ house. Van Ness would don the veteran’s combat helmet, and Granddaddy would regale him with vividly reenacted stories of his time as a military commander, including sharing photographs of him with Winston Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower in 1945. “Everything I learned from him has helped shape the man I am today,” the author fondly writes. He recalls enjoying day camp as an athletic, adventuresome boy, but, as a football player in grade school in Washington, D.C., he was regularly shuffled to Bethesda Naval Hospital for random sports injuries. As the descendant of military warriors, Van Ness believed it would be “natural for me to think I would follow in their footsteps,” and he soon began dreaming of a Navy medical career. Though the staunch anti-war movement of the 1960s derailed any interest in military enlistment, the author eventually became a Navy physician, setting the groundwork for a career as a medical officer that would inform and greatly enrich his adult life.
While the volume’s timeline isn’t always reliably linear, Van Ness’ account shimmers not only with palpable pride for his familial heritage, but also the honor and respect he holds for America as well. Written with the same verve, authority, and redemptive honor as his debut biography about his grandfather’s legacy, General in Command (2019), this striking follow-up deftly intermingles Van Ness’ own life and adventures with those of his grandfather, offering greater insights and more meticulous details than the first work. The author draws from his experiences as a Navy doctor and the son of a naval aviator to infuse authenticity into a busy book that also includes complex stories from his friends, classmates, and their families as well as evocative retellings of historical events like the Battle of the Bulge, which his grandfather actively participated in. Though wartime tales can sometimes be dismal and cumbersome, Van Ness is a passionate, natural storyteller, and his dynamic prose strikes sincere, uplifting, and heartfelt notes throughout, with an extra emphasis on the preservation of history since, as the author posits about the contemporary political climate, “we are facing threats to our republic.” The volume concludes with an extensive reference section that features historical photographs, maps, document snapshots, Anderson’s military roles and rankings, and heavily detailed notations and ancestry charts of the author’s family’s expansive progeny. The result is a literary time capsule that informs, educates, and enlightens while paying an honorable personal tribute to the heroic veteran experience.
A sublime amalgam of personal recollections and meticulous wartime biography brimming with reverence and brio.Pub Date: June 13, 2022
ISBN: 9780999770542
Page Count: 318
Publisher: Modern Memoirs
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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