Readers who can’t get enough of speed and steel will find this a ride worth taking.
A behind-the-scenes look at an action movie franchise that has captivated the world.
It was supposed to be, in the words of Universal Pictures’ Scott Stuber, “a small kids and cars movie for spring break.” But in the hands of director Rob Cohen, and stars Paul Walker and Vin Diesel, the 2001 movie The Fast and the Furious became something else—a massive, iconic blockbuster that turned into an unstoppable franchise, one that is still going strong. In his book, film critic Hertz aims to take readers behind the scenes of the Fast & Furious franchise, which has stretched across 11 films and starred notable actors, including Dwayne Johnson, Tyrese Gibson, and, improbably, Helen Mirren. Based on more than 170 interviews, Hertz’s book takes readers behind the conception and shooting of all of the car-centric action films, which, he says, “serve as a rebuke to the kind of mushy modern blockbuster that values pixels over people, safety over sensation.” Hertz does a great job explaining the innovations that brought the films to life and exploring the various dramas that have plagued the franchise for years, particularly the long-running feud between Diesel and Johnson that reached a crescendo with Johnson’s Instagram post with the #ZeroToleranceforCandyAsses hashtag. The franchise was threatened by the death of Walker in a 2013 car crash, which Hertz handles sensitively: “No longer was the Fast team simply finishing a movie; they were honoring a life.” Hertz’s prose is muscular, matching the tone of the films, and he understands the movies’ appeal, which has extended beyond their initial planned audience of young men. Anyone interested in the history of modern popular film will get lost in Hertz’s well-told story.
Readers who can’t get enough of speed and steel will find this a ride worth taking.Pub Date: Nov. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781538771037
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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