A groundbreaking look at a boxing champion’s antidiscrimination efforts.
Revisiting—and revising—the Joe Louis legend.
This deeply researched volume by historians Roberts and Smith takes a look at the famed boxer’s World War II service and the little-known battles he fought on behalf of Black servicemen and the nascent Civil Rights Movement. It’s an excellent corrective to those who think militance began with Muhammad Ali, though the approaches of the two champions were different. While never denying the suffering of his people, from the outset Louis made his commitment clear to opposing the Nazi threat—he got off to a start by famously knocking out Germany’s Max Schmeling in 1938. As he told a reporter, “Sure the Negro has a lot of beefs, but Hitler and Hirohito aren’t going to change them any.” Louis followed his own course, endorsing FDR’s Republican opponent, Wendell Willkie, because of his disappointment with Roosevelt’s refusal to push for anti-lynching laws for fear of antagonizing Southern Democrats. Taking Jackie Robinson under his wing when they were stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, Louis supported Robinson’s struggle to be admitted into officer candidate school and Robinson’s defiance of an order to move to the back of a bus in Camp Hood, Texas. Along with Sugar Ray Robinson, Louis also defied a similar order in Alabama, paving the way for an end to antidiscrimination policies—and ultimately, Harry Truman’s (initially vague) executive order integrating the military. Louis appeared at benefits with Nat “King” Cole, Billie Holiday, and Woody Guthrie and was memorialized in a poem, “King Joe,” by Richard Wright. The authors do not stint on details of Louis’ personal life, including his scorching extramarital affair with Lena Horne, or on the mob’s involvement in the fighting racket and the sweetheart deals that left Louis broke while promoters and Uncle Sam cleaned out his fortune. But he remained a champion. As sportswriter Jimmy Cannon once put it: “He was a credit to his race—the human race.”
A groundbreaking look at a boxing champion’s antidiscrimination efforts.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781541605060
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
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
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
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