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WHITE LIES

THE DOUBLE LIFE OF WALTER F. WHITE AND AMERICA’S DARKEST SECRET

A well-constructed life of a man who, largely forgotten, deserves pride of place in civil rights history.

Sturdy biography of a Black journalist, writer, and reformer who moved easily, if sometimes stealthily, between two worlds.

Walter Francis White (1893-1955) was born in Atlanta to light-skinned Black parents whose multiracial heritage spoke to the complex genealogies of the Old South. “My skin is white, my eyes are blue, my hair is blond,” White would later write. “The traits of my race are nowhere visible upon me.” The absence of those traits allowed White and his family to survive the waves of lynchings that plagued the South. In his early 20s, he moved to New York, where he worked as an investigator and sometime journalist, often returning to the South posing as a White man to examine racially motivated murder cases. Baime ably depicts White’s lifelong Zelig-like abilities: He was at some of the signal events of his time, taking his place at the lead of the Harlem Renaissance, doing gumshoe work in the immediate aftermath of the Tulsa Massacre, weathering the Red Scare, and accumulating scores of friends. The author brings us directly into White’s fascinating world, in which Langston Hughes and Paul Robeson were frequent guests at salons White held in Harlem, while “George Gershwin debuted Rhapsody in Blue on Walter’s piano.” Active in civil rights as a leader in the NAACP, White pressed Franklin Roosevelt to support activist legislation to advance Black causes, which Roosevelt did not do willingly, fearful that “he would offend a power base of his own party, the Democrats’ Solid South.” Fortunately, Eleanor Roosevelt reached out to express her support, trying to persuade her husband to do the right thing—and adding another friend to White’s long list. He died too young, and he was almost immediately pushed into the back ranks of the civil rights movement, although he was the primary architect of an anti-lynching bill that has yet to clear the Senate, thanks to the opposition of Rand Paul.

A well-constructed life of a man who, largely forgotten, deserves pride of place in civil rights history.

Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2022

ISBN: 978-0-358-44775-7

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Mariner Books

Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2022

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107 DAYS

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

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POEMS & PRAYERS

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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