by Brenda Jones & Krishan Trotman ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 30, 2020
Illuminatingly spirited.
The latest in the Queens of the Resistance series, exploring the life and career of “political samurai” Elizabeth Warren.
Like each subject of Jones and Trotman’s series, Oklahoma native Warren has long worked to achieve social and political justice. She grew up in a family in which the breadwinning role unexpectedly shifted to her homemaker mother after a heart attack left her father in poor health. At 12, Warren began to help her family financially, first by babysitting and then by waitressing. An excellent student, she attended college but dropped out to marry her high school sweetheart. She earned her degree several years later and began working as a children’s speech pathologist. Forced to leave her job due to pregnancy, Warren went to law school, divorced her tradition-minded husband, and became a single mother to two small children. Warren’s path led to academia, where she became an expert in bankruptcy. This led to a political realignment from Republican to Democrat and an awakening regarding the status of working-class Americans. Later, as a Harvard professor, she served on the Congressional Oversight Panel to monitor how the Treasury Department managed the Great Recession bank bailout. Though reluctant to enter politics, Warren became the first woman senator from Massachusetts in 2013 and a symbol of outspoken persistence in the face of government patriarchy. Galled by the “circus behavior” of the Trump administration, Warren became a 2020 presidential candidate “with a plan,” fighting on behalf of “regular people who just want[ed] a fair shake.” This unabashedly feminist biography is sometimes irritatingly familiar and casual in tone—“I mean gosh, little lady, don’t get so specific with your ‘planz’ ”; “Hadn’t she learned from Hillary? Too smart, little lady, that means you’ll lose. And God forbid she wear a pantsuit! Nooooooo.”—but it’s still a hopeful, educative read.
Illuminatingly spirited.Pub Date: June 30, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-18986-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Plume
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
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by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
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by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
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by Steve Martin illustrated by Harry Bliss ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 17, 2020
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
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IndieBound Bestseller
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
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