Brokaw pays homage to the sacrifices of his parents’ generation—and finds their successors wanting by comparison.
The venerable news anchor narrows the Greatest Generation to the folks back home.
Born and raised in small-town South Dakota at the end of the Depression, Brokaw recounts values learned in farm fields and at the kitchen table, all distilled into the admonition of his title. The Brokaw family, erstwhile French Huguenots converted to Catholicism out on the prairie, made do with what they had. Emblematic of their grit was Brokaw’s father, known as Red for his fiery hair, who began to work as a frontier factotum at the age of 8 and, on the side, did a little bare-knuckle fighting. “It was the beginning of an adventurous working-class life,” writes the author, “that lifted Red to heights he could not have imagined as a youngster working on difficult prairie projects.” He moved on from descending into crumbling holes to clear wells to helping build one of the country’s largest dams. “His unspoken guide to life,” Brokaw reiterates, “was never give up, never complain.” It was the kind of regime guaranteed to send a person to an early grave, but it afforded Brokaw the wherewithal to get an education and start out on a journalism career that would eventually land him at the top of his profession. With no false sentimentality, the author also celebrates his mother, who seemed able to do just about anything around the home but also “taught her sons to do laundry and ironing” and was a whirlwind of an organizer for the Democratic Party. With his customary evenhanded tone, Brokaw voices a few regrets, including not quite understanding at the time how the anti–Vietnam War movement, mostly populated by people who had deferments and weren’t going to fight anyway, alienated old-school liberals such as Brokaw’s dad and “played right into the fury of working-class Americans.”
Brokaw pays homage to the sacrifices of his parents’ generation—and finds their successors wanting by comparison.Pub Date: June 13, 2023
ISBN: 9780593596371
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
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