by Bill O'Reilly ; Martin Dugard ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 10, 2024
For those in need of a handy checklist of who was who in the White House, here it is.
A shallow dive into the POTUS pool.
George Washington enjoyed snacking on “nuts, cheese, and bread.” Omnivorous Bill Clinton “openly admits a fondness for enchiladas and jalapeño cheeseburgers.” Thomas Jefferson “prefers a great assortment of vegetables with a small portion of meat.” Of Trump’s devotion to hamberders we learn nothing, but George Bush dug a lunchtime BLT, Barack Obama a breakfast of “eggs, potatoes, and wheat toast,” Abraham Lincoln a hard-boiled egg, Richard Nixon “cottage cheese doused in ketchup.” For a book not explicitly called “Favorite Foods of the Presidents,” there’s a lot of attention to our leaders’ culinary leanings. Apart from that, fallen Fox News star O’Reilly and sidekick Dugard skim over the presidents’ histories for a few pages apiece, always taking care to state the well known: “Harry S. Truman has no middle name.” “Abraham Lincoln does not live to see the party. Six days earlier [sic], he is shot in the head while watching a play with his wife in a place called Ford’s Theater.” “The safety nets [Franklin] Roosevelt put into place protect vulnerable Americans to this day.” Following these cursory biographies, the authors rank the presidents: Washington and Lincoln were great, and FDR too, even if “he enabled Stalin and the Cold War” (a remark with which historians may differ). Nixon is remembered as corrupt: “That may not be fair, but history often isn’t.” (The possibility that Nixon actually was corrupt is, unsurprisingly, not discussed.) Millard Fillmore was in over his head and “failed to grasp the growing danger America was facing from a slavery-driven insurrection.” And so on.
For those in need of a handy checklist of who was who in the White House, here it is.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9781250346414
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
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BOOK REVIEW
by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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New York Times Bestseller
IndieBound Bestseller
National Book Award Finalist
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
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BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
by Stephanie Johnson & Brandon Stanton illustrated by Henry Sene Yee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 12, 2022
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
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New York Times Bestseller
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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by Brandon Stanton ; photographed by Brandon Stanton
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