by Rusty Glicksman ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A
A superb travelogue, brimming with color, adventure, and pungent insights.
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A man wanders the East searching for experience, enlightenment, and good hash in this luminous memoir.
Glicksman, an American English professor and jewelry importer before his death in 2021, recaps three decades of periodic sojourns in the Middle and Far East starting in 1971. The author usually traveled on his own, in threadbare circumstances. His destinations included Turkey, where he encountered “hashish of a legendary quality” that made “the air…thick and wavy,” Afghanistan, where he endured “merciless heat” during a rooftop bus trip with the help of “a gigantic spliff” of “fine Afghan hashish,” and Katmandu, which boasted “government hashish shops…where you ordered as much as you wanted.” But his heart belonged to India, less for the hash than for the spiritual profundity of its Hindu and Buddhist lifeways. Glicksman took in funeral cremations in the holy city of Varanasi; watched as a snake charmer got several cobras—and an awestruck crowd—swaying in unison to his hypnotic tune; was menaced by a monkey that imperiously ransacked his room for food; did relief work in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, where he was appalled by the death and devastation from a cyclone; engaged in searching philosophical discussions at ashrams; and “inhaled deeply of air that seemed to come from a much older time, a time, perhaps, when men shared the earth with gods” at the temple of Hadimba Devi. An epic 1985 trek to Tibet’s capital of Lhasa ended with a brief, poignant love affair with a Chinese teacher. Later chapters on his travels in the 1990s sound an autumnal note as the author registers the creeping commercialization in once unspoiled Indian towns engulfed by the tourist trade and mourns the waning of his youthful tolerance of grungy authenticity.
Glicksman’s is a beguiling, sometimes-prickly, always compelling voice; he’s raptly attuned to and respectful of his surroundings, but always uncomfortably aware of his status as an outsider looking in, entranced by Eastern religious culture but too questioning and too set in his Jewish heritage to wholly embrace it. (He’s also politically outspoken, on everything from his opposition to the Vietnam War to his loathing of nuclear power.) Glicksman’s ravishing prose is full of fresh, evocative takes on landscapes—“how light and airy the [Taj Mahal] looked….like a butterfly resting on a leaf, readying to take flight.” There is a spirituality evident in the writing, one that comes not from theology but from a painstaking, open-hearted observation of reality. (“[H]er hands and face laid waste by leprosy, this woman made pariah by the superstition of man, returned my stare with one of the most beautiful smiles I had ever seen. She had splendid white teeth. From a ravaged freak, she transformed before my astonished gaze into a princess, an angel, and Mother India gave me yet another nudge into uncharted waters.”) This memoir is an entrancing saga of a man expanding his soul by resolutely abandoning his comfort zone.
A superb travelogue, brimming with color, adventure, and pungent insights.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 284
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Stephanie Johnson & Brandon Stanton illustrated by Henry Sene Yee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 12, 2022
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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by Brandon Stanton photographed by Brandon Stanton
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by Brandon Stanton ; photographed by Brandon Stanton
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New York Times Bestseller
by Pamela Anderson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 31, 2023
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
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New York Times Bestseller
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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