They just don't make characters like this anymore. Kudos to Prioleau for her gallant historical rescue mission.
An outsize, obnoxious, 19th-century self-made millionaire is restored to her rightful place.
Born to a family of "bounders and bankrupts" in New Orleans, her unknown biological mother likely Black, though her biraciality was never acknowledged, Miriam Florence Squier Leslie (1836-1914) clawed her way up the social structure to become an important figure in publishing, managing several magazines she inherited from her third husband, Frank Leslie. She also wrote essays and books. As Prioleau makes clear, class divisions in America were extreme during Leslie's lifetime, which encompassed the Haymarket Riots, the Johnstown flood, and the Great Depression. Yet by deploying her inimitable blend of intellect, drive, greed, sex appeal, deceit, and inferiority complex–fueled snobbery, Leslie leapt the chasm between poor and rich and amassed a huge fortune, largely spent on Gilded Age excess in lodgings, attire, and hospitality. No matter what she did—and she did plenty—this world-class striver was never embraced by the upper crust. She avoided philanthropy, preferring to revile rather than lend a hand to the poor. Yet in a brilliant final stroke that balances her more foolish and despicable choices, she left her fortune to the women's movement, funding the work that helped to pass the 19th Amendment. Prioleau, whose earlier works have focused on great seducers and seductresses, is a perfect biographer of Leslie, who was mentored by no less than Lola Montez in the application of womanly charms. “A self-mythologizer,” writes the author, “she saw herself as the legendary Lilith, the immortal gadfly and moral truant, who defied Adam’s dominion and founded her own paradise, filled with ‘jinn’ lovers and a race of ‘glorious,’ ‘rebellious daughters’ ‘claiming the New World as their special domain.’ ” The author uses anachronistic vocabulary and peppers her sentences with words and phrases quoted from source documents, giving the narrative an amusing period feel.
They just don't make characters like this anymore. Kudos to Prioleau for her gallant historical rescue mission.Pub Date: March 29, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-4683-1450-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
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
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