A thoroughly depressing portrait.
Abundant testimony regarding how the current president is a bully, a narcissist, and a sexual predator.
Offering information about 67 incidents of alleged inappropriate behavior, some from women speaking out for the first time, investigative reporter Levine and Paris-based journalist El-Faizy (God and Country: How Evangelicals Have Become America’s New Mainstream, 2006) create a disturbing exposé of Donald Trump’s relationships with women. Raised by a diffident mother who ignored her husband’s philandering, and a cruel, demanding father, the young Donald was a bully; at the age of 13, was sent to the New York Military Academy, where he fit right in to the school’s culture of violence. As a young adult, he took sexual libertine Hugh Hefner and sleazy lawyer Roy Cohn as role models. Tall, good-looking, and rich, he had no trouble attracting the “fake blondes with boobs” that he preferred, including Ivana Zelnickova, a Czech ski champion and model, whom he met in 1976 and married the next year. Beautiful, intelligent, and ambitious, she became a helpmate to the rising real estate mogul, proving herself so competent that Trump came to resent her. Although they were touted in gossip columns as the “golden couple” of the 1980s, Trump pursued “very young women”—younger than 21—one model told the authors, whom he subjected to groping, forcible kissing, and exposure when he barged into their dressing rooms. Besides partying at Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion and frequenting hot nightclubs, in the 1990s, Trump started his own modeling agency and bought the Miss Universe Organization, the better to supply his demand for women. The authors recount his 1993 marriage to Marla Maples, after their daughter Tiffany was born; and to Melania Knauss. Besides anecdotes and testimony, including from a few women who defend their admiration for Trump, a 50-page appendix augments details about women mentioned in the book, as well as others. Despite revealing a few new voices, the authors present little that most readers don’t already know about America’s crude, crass leader.
A thoroughly depressing portrait.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-49266-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Hachette
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
James Baldwin has come a long way since the days of Notes of a Native Son, when, in 1955, he wrote: "I love America more than any other country in the world; and exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually." Such bittersweet affairs are bound to turn sour. The first curdling came with The Fire Next Time, a moving memoir, yet shot through with rage and prophetic denunciations. It made Baldwin famous, indeed a celebrity, but it did little, in retrospect, to further his artistic reputation. Increasingly, it seems, he found it impossible to reconcile his private and public roles, his creative integrity and his position as spokesman for his race. Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone, for example, his last novel, proved to be little more than a propagandistic potboiler. Nor, alas, are things very much better in No Name In the Street, a brief, rather touchy and self-regarding survey of the awful events of the '60's — the deaths of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, the difficulties of the Black Panther Party, the abrasive and confused relationships between liberals and militants. True, Baldwin's old verve and Biblical raciness are once more heard in his voice; true, there are poignant moments and some surprisingly intimate details. But this chronicle of his "painful route back to engagement" never really comes to grips with history or the self. The revelatory impulse is present only in bits and pieces. Mostly one is confronted with psychological and ideological disingenuousness — and vanity as well.
Pub Date: May 26, 1972
ISBN: 0307275922
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A surprisingly warm and consistently outspoken retrospective for both fans and celebrity followers.
The self-described “king of all media” shares personal introspection and favorite celebrity interviews in his first book in two decades.
Stern (Miss America, 1995, etc.) is in top form in this entertaining amalgam of intimate confessional and Q-and-A archive. Opting for an older, wiser perspective this time around, the author strips away the juvenile raunch and sophomoric humor that made his first books runaway bestsellers. The book’s introduction, a meaty, contemplative 19-page affair, finds Stern, 65, candidly discussing his struggles with OCD, random regrets (namely his treatment of Robin Williams and Rosie O’Donnell), greatest moments (interviews with Conan O’Brien and Paul McCartney, animal rescue efforts), his move to SiriusXM in 2006, and the day he inexplicably took a rare show-day off to attend to an undisclosed cancer scare. It’s a kinder, gentler, all-grown-up side of the shock jock, which he credits to aggressive psychotherapy and his second wife, Beth. However, it’s the intimate, provocative celebrity interviews that make up the bulk of this weighty tome and which the author admits “represent my best work and show my personal evolution.” With his advancing age came wisdom, humility, empathy, and a dramatic sea change in the show’s direction and focus, as evidenced in more nuanced, probing interviews with Courtney Love, Joan Rivers, Michael J. Fox, Chris Cornell, and Lady Gaga, among others. Stern introduces each conversation with his personal perspective on the individual and the impression they made. His honest conversations with actors, music legends, and others represent an eclectic cross-section of celebrities, and his questions range from the piercing to the downright ridiculous. Perhaps the book’s most startling interview segments are those with a pre-presidential Donald Trump, whom Stern has interviewed dozens of times. Throughout the book, which is divided into thematic sections (“Sex & Relationships,” “Money & Fame,” “Drugs & Sobriety,” “Gone Too Soon,” etc.), the author’s personal growth and enduring legacy as a broadcast pioneer and unique profiler are on full display.
A surprisingly warm and consistently outspoken retrospective for both fans and celebrity followers.Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9429-0
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2019
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