by Anne L. Watson ; photographed by Aaron Shepard ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2024
A comprehensive, organized, and deliciously readable manual that provides instruction with enthusiasm and ease.
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Watson, a writer of several books about innovative crafting, offers a thorough introduction to a clever new craft.
The author’s charming guide presents advice on creating decorations and useful household items from polymer clay with the help of an unexpected set of tools: cookie dough molds. The book, which is divided into two sections, is appropriate for crafters at every level. It begins with tips on materials, including a comprehensive list of mold brands and where to find them. Items like these are relatively uncommon in contemporary kitchens, but crafters who might be daunted by the idea of using them to work with clay will be reassured by Watson’s detailed instructions on their employment and maintenance. Readers will find it hard to resist Watson’s excitement throughout these pages: “It’s a match! Cookie molds and polymer clay are perfect crafting companions!” Still, her eager outbursts are tempered with levelheaded advice about clay safety and meticulously researched information about different types of materials, adhesives, and tools. In the book’s second part, Watson describes 32 projects that will allow readers to practice the skills they’ve just learned. They include an easy, one-piece Halloween basket charm and a more intricate majolica box, and each project’s difficulty is ranked on a scale from Beginning to Intermediate to Advanced. Shepard, Watson’s husband, has photographed her creations at every step of their construction, making even the most complicated projects accessible for ambitious crafters. With easy-to-follow instructions and more than 170 photos, Watson’s book is the authoritative guide to a relatively obscure crafting art, as well as a treat to read.
A comprehensive, organized, and deliciously readable manual that provides instruction with enthusiasm and ease.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2024
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Shepard Publications
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Anne L. Watson ; illustrated by Wendy Edelson
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by Brandon Stanton ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 7, 2025
A familiar format, but a timely reminder that cities are made up of individuals, each with their own stories.
Portraits in a post-pandemic world.
After the Covid-19 lockdowns left New York City’s streets empty, many claimed that the city was “gone forever.” It was those words that inspired Stanton, whose previous collections include Humans of New York (2013), Humans of New York: Stories (2015), and Humans (2020), to return to the well once more for a new love letter to the city’s humanity and diversity. Beautifully laid out in hardcover with crisp, bright images, each portrait of a New Yorker is accompanied by sparse but potent quotes from Stanton’s interviews with his subjects. Early in the book, the author sequences three portraits—a couple laughing, then looking serious, then the woman with tears in her eyes—as they recount the arc of their relationship, transforming each emotional beat of their story into an affecting visual narrative. In another, an unhoused man sits on the street, his husky eating out of his hand. The caption: “I’m a late bloomer.” Though the pandemic isn’t mentioned often, Stanton focuses much of the book on optimistic stories of the post-pandemic era. Among the most notable profiles is Myles Smutney, founder of the Free Store Project, whose story of reclaiming boarded‑up buildings during the lockdowns speaks to the city’s resilience. In reusing the same formula from his previous books, the author confirms his thesis: New York isn’t going anywhere. As he writes in his lyrical prologue, “Just as one might dive among coral reefs to marvel at nature, one can come to New York City to marvel at humanity.” The book’s optimism paints New York as a city where diverse lives converge in moments of beauty, joy, and collective hope.
A familiar format, but a timely reminder that cities are made up of individuals, each with their own stories.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781250277589
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
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by Stephanie Johnson & Brandon Stanton illustrated by Henry Sene Yee
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by Brandon Stanton photographed by Brandon Stanton
by David McCullough ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 2025
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.
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New York Times Bestseller
Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past.
McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781668098998
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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