Fully fleshed portrait of a complicated woman who considered being a movie star a job and worked at it every day.
Knowledgeable biography of the actress whose film career ran from the silents through the ’60s.
Golden Age specialist Eyman provides a smart account of Crawford’s life (1905ish-1977) and her long tenure at the top of the Hollywood totem pole. He locates the source of her famously driven personality in a hardscrabble working-class childhood with “father figures who came and went” and a mother and brother she disliked, though she supported them throughout their lives. She started as a dancer, landed an MGM contract while still in her teens, and got her big break with Our Dancing Daughters in 1928, causing a sensation with her uninhibited Charleston and unabashed sexuality. She seamlessly made the transition to sound and was one of MGM’s leading lights for nearly 20 years, famous for her professionalism: never arrived late to the set, knew the name of every crew member, did endless interviews and PR appearances without complaint, was always glamorously dressed and made up. When she sensed the studio’s interest flagging as she approached her 40s, she asked to be released from her contract and moved over to Warner Bros., garnering one of her biggest hits (and an Oscar) for Mildred Pierce. Eyman gives shrewd appraisals of Crawford’s many films, including Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? in the twilight of her career, and a frank but sympathetic look at her personal life. He clearly likes his subject, appreciating her lifelong loyalty to friends famous and obscure, as well as to ex-husbands Douglas Fairbanks and Franchot Tone. He dismisses the most lurid charges in daughter Christina’s notorious Mommie Dearest (vehemently disputed by two of Crawford’s other adopted children) but doesn’t whitewash her overly strict parenting. Eyman is not likely to win any awards for his prose style, and there’s not a lot new here, but this is a fair and comprehensive biography.
Fully fleshed portrait of a complicated woman who considered being a movie star a job and worked at it every day.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668047309
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
Suffering unfathomable anguish, a mother memorializes her murdered son with great tenderness.
Remembering “Hershy.”
Three hundred and twenty-eight days. That’s how long Hersh Goldberg-Polin was held in captivity—tortured and starved by his captors in underground tunnels—before he was executed. He was 23 years old. In this unvarnished and heartrending account, Goldberg-Polin’s mother, Rachel, writes of the unending torment that she and her husband, Jon, endured after learning that their son had been kidnapped by Hamas terrorists during the attacks of October 7, 2023. Like so many other young people on that day, Hersh was attending a music festival in Israel—a celebration of love and unity. As Goldberg-Polin writes, her son was “the only American citizen kidnapped alive on October 7th who did not return alive.” In direct, plainspoken language that steers clear of politics, the author, a Jewish educator, recounts “being in a daze of the most indescribably sickening horror and fear, like nothing I had ever felt in my life. I remember my heart racing and feeling like I was in a permanent state of someone scaring me.” In addition to “shovel[ing] out my pain in the form of words,” she shares reminiscences of her son, as well as details that only a parent could notice. “His eyes were cookies,” she says of her “Hershy.” “I couldn’t find the pupils within the dark chocolate-brown irises.…He had a raspy voice, even when he was a baby.” And: “I thought he was hilarious; his sarcasm and humor were similar to mine.” Hersh and his sisters, Leebie and Orly, adapted well to life in Israel after the family moved from Richmond, Virginia. (Hersh was born in the Bay Area.) After being discharged from his service in the Israeli army as a combat medic, he was planning to journey around the world—a longtime dream of his. “So many people have come to love you, Hersh,” Jon Polin writes in the book’s afterword. And with one simple word that has the power to touch any heart, he signs off: “Dada.”
Suffering unfathomable anguish, a mother memorializes her murdered son with great tenderness.Pub Date: April 21, 2026
ISBN: 9798217198009
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2026
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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