The flamboyant talk show host delivers an entirely expected book: a glitzy, glamorous, goofy look at 365 days of a charmed...
Cable TV’s dishiest guy at his dishy best.
Depending on whom you ask, the brainchild behind Bravo’s Real Housewives franchise and Watch What Happens Live—as well as the network’s former head of development—is either a parody of a talk show host or a true TV original. Those kinds of against-the-grain personalities generally elicit a loyal fan base, and Cohen (Most Talkative: Stories From the Front Lines of Pop Culture, 2012) is no exception. In the crowded late-night landscape, his ratings remain solid, and he always lines up quality guests to do “shotskis” in his studio. His second book is a straight-up diary that his fans will relish and detractors will ignore. However, part of what makes Cohen so appealing on the page is his humility. He’s well-aware of his position as a TV anomaly and often displays a gee-whiz attitude about his brushes with fame. In discussing a particularly star-filled week on WWHL, he admits, “For Cher I was excited but with Oprah I was nervous, actually shaking for an hour before the show.” But everything isn’t campy and fabulous: The author’s story of his encounter with Conan O’Brien, in which the veteran host talked the newbie over some bumps, is almost touching, and his love for his dog is sweet and relatable. Cohen spends a lot of time discussing Housewives, so if you are not a fan of that particular franchise, parts of the narrative will drag. But not to worry: You’re never more than a page or two away from some dish about Lady Gaga, Emma Stone, David Letterman and a host of other celebrities.
The flamboyant talk show host delivers an entirely expected book: a glitzy, glamorous, goofy look at 365 days of a charmed showbiz life.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62779-228-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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