An odds-and-ends miscellany best suited for hard-core fans.
A deep dive into all things Doyle.
In their choppy second book, the father-and-son team of Eugene and Daniel Friedman offers a “fresh and unexpected perspective” on the doctor and his famous fictional character. They begin by looking at Arthur Conan Doyle’s early years “under the lens of a microscope,” uncovering obscure bits of biographical information, concluding Doyle inserted portions of his personality and early years into the characters of Holmes and Watson. In medical school, Doyle’s friend William Budd, with his “Holmes-like powers of observation,” influenced many stories. The authors explore how Doyle drew upon a “remarkably gifted coterie of physicians” and how he “transmuted” them into the gifted Holmes, and they show how another Edinburgh doctor, William Rutherford, inspired Doyle’s later creation, George Edward Challenger. They uncover a “long overlooked and virtually unknown Black leader Doyle met” while serving as ship’s physician aboard a freighter; this character, they write, “lurks behind his civil rights–inspired tales.” The Friedmans spend time on Doyle’s importance as a doctor who spoke out about urgent health matters like vaccinations and water contaminants, and they examine the influence fellow writers William Henley and Robert Louis Stevenson had on him. They also consider how Professor John Moriarty and Holmes’ relationship was becoming a “millstone” around the physician’s neck. After he killed Holmes off, ardent readers persuaded Doyle to bring him back. The Friedmans go on to examine his close relationship with friend and writer Grant Allen, for whom Doyle graciously completed the ill man’s last book; and Doyle’s feelings for and travels in America and his “lifelong belief in the unseen world,” employing “his own brand of scientific methodology to delve into the metaphysical.” The book concludes with a special treat: two stories by one of Doyle’s mentors, Dr. Reginald Ratcliff Hoare, stories the Friedmans endeavor to prove with scrupulous textual analysis were actually written by Doyle.
An odds-and-ends miscellany best suited for hard-core fans.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780757004483
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Square One Publishers
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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