A thrilling joyride through the life of a fighter pilot.
A retired Air Force fighter pilot recalls his Cold War–era experiences in this debut memoir.
“Knock it off!” the author’s wingman shouts in the opening lines of this memoir by retired fighter pilot Graham. At the age of 44 in 1980, the author was the “Old Man” of the 36th Tactical Fighter Squadron, and he had taken the opportunity on his last ride to engage in a mock dogfight while flying a new model of the F-4E on a training mission off the South Korean coast. The real-life embodiment of the Hollywood Top Gun franchise, Graham spent more than two decades in the Air Force; here, he recounts the exhilarating life of a fighter pilot during the height of American tensions with the Soviet Union. For instance, he describes his experiences with the F-100 Super Sabre—a supersonic fighter with high accident rates that was “unstable” by design—as a “love-hate relationship” in which danger and exhilaration were in constant competition. Initially stationed in Misawa, Japan, in the 1960s with a squadron tasked with nuclear deterrence, the author emphasizes that, from his vantage, the war’s “temperature never got less than warm and above”; he would fly within miles of Vladivostok just to make the Russian “air defense system nervous.” From his initial deployment in East Asia, Graham transitioned to the war in Vietnam, where the author served in a variety of missions following the Tonkin Bay episode that ignited a long-term conflict.
While harrowing accounts of aerial heroism loom large in these passages, the book is at its best when giving a pilot’s view of war. Comparing his career as a fighter pilot to a “love affair,” Graham approached military life with a jocular attituded that he likens to a benched athlete eager to get into the game (“Come on, Coach, put me in!”). He even, in one account, risked going AWOL while in California because he couldn’t wait to get back to Saigon. While the narrative oozes with heroic tales and camaraderie, the author is not afraid to criticize officers “trying unsuccessfully to run the battle from an airconditioned office ten thousand miles away.” The content is generally apolitical (Graham virtually never mentions any president or politician by name), but the author notes that airmen and soldiers had to look out for themselves as “good men getting killed will not make a difference to the politicians at the negotiating table.” Graham also discusses how the tumultuous social and racial climate of the 1970s impacted military life—one anecdote concerns a knife fight between a “Ku Klux Klan guy” and a member of the Black Panther Party. The author’s engaging writing style and love for the planes he flew make for a thrilling read. The text is peppered throughout with hypermasculine inspirational quotes by Theodore Roosevelt, Ernest Hemingway, and others. The work includes full-color, high resolution photographs, maps, reproductions of handwritten letters, and other visual elements. While the text runs over 400 total pages, little information is provided about the author’s life before and after the military.
A thrilling joyride through the life of a fighter pilot.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9798992412307
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2025
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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