A colorfully presented and encouraging history of an important community institution.
A chronicle of Middletown, Connecticut’s Community Health Center from its modest beginnings in the 1970s to its frontline fight against Covid-19 today.
In October 1973, recent college dropout Mark Masselli rolled out a sleeping bag in the cold, dangerous North End of Middletown, Connecticut. For three days he half-slept outside the building at 631 Main St. to ambush the delinquent leasee for the keys to the abandoned Carrie Plumbing & Heating Company, soon to be the neighborhood’s Community Health Center. Such was the modest beginning and first location of the CHC, which over the next several decades would evolve from a much-needed independent free clinic providing dental services and sickle cell anemia screenings to a federally qualified health center with numerous locations. Mark, educated in the activism of the 1970s and assisted by proximity to Wesleyan University, was aided by others, including pharmacists, doctors, and community figures who believed in the basic tenet that “healthcare is a right and not a privilege.” They would work to bring patient-centered care to overlooked poor, immigrant, and minority citizens. The steady growth of the CHC and the champions behind it are beautifully featured in pages of full-color and black-and-white photos and news clippings as well as sobering early balance sheets. Their battles, including bureaucratic fights with a callous city hall, prepared the CHC to later respond quickly to the Covid-19 pandemic. Barber’s book boasts attractive layouts and design, vibrantly presenting a thorough timeline of the CHC, its innovations and expansions, and the development of its internationally recognized research entity, the Weitzman Institute. The story is as much about Masselli as a personality as it is about the clinics he founded, and it effectively captures his devotion to equity in health care through shared missives and regular examples of leadership through listening. Still, the book can be a bit dry and textbooklike in its presentation, which might have been alleviated by more expansive interviews and testimonials. Overall, though, there’s a hopefulness in seeing such important services not only surviving, but thriving.
A colorfully presented and encouraging history of an important community institution.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2022
ISBN: 9781959262008
Page Count: 178
Publisher: Octoberworks
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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 Yorkerstaff 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
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
