A gripping and revelatory behind-the-scenes look at investment banking.
A memoir offers a warts-and-all insider view of the high-stakes investment banking world.
This new book from Keenan chronicles his experiences at Deutsche Bank in Manhattan as an associate after a stint as a professional hockey player. Here readers see him apply for the job, get it, attend the long orientation sessions alongside his many fellow new hires, and begin his work as an investment banker in the cubicles, hallways, and late-night bars of the finance world. “Can you imagine if people knew what corporate finance was really like?” asks a cohort at one point in the account, to which the author replies: “I feel like only a fiction writer could show this world, what really happens here.” Some of his colleagues have on their shelves untouched copies of business classics like Den of Thieves, Liar’s Poker, and Barbarians at the Gate. Although Keenan’s memoir is every bit as informative as those earlier titles, it’s also game and accessible, coming across at all points as the most readable kind of The Firm–style fiction, complete with sharp personalities and lively dialogue. The author dramatizes his time at Deutsche Bank with colorful anecdotes but also grounds things in industry details. When mentioning something called a “football field sheet,” for instance, he footnotes: “A summary output of all valuation methods used. The name is derived from the fact that the output resembles a football field—or at least what bankers think a football field looks like” (adding, in his signature iconoclastic style, “I don’t see it”). His own experiences in the trenches are far less the shark-tank glamour of Wall Street and far more the squalid desperation of Boiler Room, and he’s always ready to offer a sardonic counterpoint. “Was I getting crushed?” he asks early in the story. “I couldn’t even tell. And if you stayed past 3:00 am one night, all that mattered was working it into every conversation you had the next day.” The result is a book that’s informative, hilarious, and dramatic, well deserving of a place on that shelf of Wall Street classics.
A gripping and revelatory behind-the-scenes look at investment banking.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64293-408-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Post Hill Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 21, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A charming and often poignant valediction from rock ’n’ roll’s Prince of Darkness.
The late heavy metal legend considers his mortality in this posthumous memoir.
“I ain’t ready to go anywhere,” writes Osbourne in the opening pages of his new memoir. “It’s good being alive. I like it. I want to be here with my family.” Given the context—Osbourne died on July 22, 2025, two weeks after the publisher announced the news of this book—it’s undeniably sad. But the rest of the text sees the Black Sabbath singer confronting the health struggles of his last years with dark humor and something approaching grace. The memoir begins in 2018; he wrote an earlier one, I Am Ozzy, in 2010. He tells of a staph infection he suffered that proved to be the start of a long, painful battle with various illnesses—soon after, he contracted a flu, which morphed into pneumonia. A spinal injury caused by a fall followed, causing him to undergo a series of surgeries and leaving him struggling with intense pain. And then there was his diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, the treatment of which was complicated by his longtime struggle with alcohol and drug addiction. Osbourne peppers the chronicle of his final years with anecdotes from his past, growing up in Birmingham, England, and playing with—and then being fired from—Black Sabbath, and some of his most well-known antics (yes, he does address biting the heads off of a dove and a bat). He writes candidly and regretfully about the time he viciously attacked his wife, Sharon—the book is in many ways a love letter to her and his children. The memoir showcases Osbourne’s wit and charm; it’s rambling and disorganized, but so was he. It functions as both a farewell and a confession, and fans will likely find much to admire in this account. “Death’s been knocking at my door for the last six years, louder and louder,” he writes. “And at some point, I’m gonna have to let him in.”
A charming and often poignant valediction from rock ’n’ roll’s Prince of Darkness.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781538775417
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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