A pertinent guidebook to coalition-based politics, particularly for young activists of color.
Inspirational memoir from former Kentucky state representative Booker, highlighting his political coming-of-age.
Booker was “the youngest Black state legislator in Kentucky in over eighty years,” and he is currently preparing to challenge Sen. Rand Paul. As one of six Black legislators, Booker’s experiences reflected expectations about racial divides yet also transcended them. “I come from the West End of Louisville,” writes the author, “a place so isolated that in many ways it has more in common with the hollers up in coal country than it has with the rest of the ‘big city.’ That often-ignored reality gave me a unique responsibility: to shine a light on our common struggle and bridge the divide between the urban and rural communities, to tell the stories that too often don’t get told inside rooms like the Kentucky State Capitol.” The author begins with a poignant portrait of a hardscrabble childhood, where his mother skipped meals in order to feed her children. Booker benefited from fitful school integration, aware of the limitations most young Blacks faced. While in law school, he forged connections within the small community of Black state politicians, initially as a legislative aide: “Once I understood how the office helped people in the community, I was all about it.” Later, he surprised his political mentors with his own successful statehouse run. “The message I brought with me from the hood was resonating with people all over Kentucky,” he writes, a message that he demonstrates in a moving passage about standing with protesting coal miners. He contrasts his ambitions with the corrosive effects of Mitch McConnell and his shadowy role at the center of Kentucky political power. McConnell, he writes, is “the single greatest obstacle to anything that would help Kentuckians live a better life.” Booker’s prose is detailed and energetic, if occasionally repetitive. He ably captures his rise in politics and sharply assesses the mechanisms of power, particularly regarding segregation and the urban-rural divide.
A pertinent guidebook to coalition-based politics, particularly for young activists of color.Pub Date: April 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-24034-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
A sharp, entertaining view of the news media from one of its star players.
The veteran newscaster reflects on her triumphs and hardships, both professional and private.
In this eagerly anticipated memoir, Couric (b. 1957) transforms the events of her long, illustrious career into an immensely readable story—a legacy-preserving exercise, for sure, yet judiciously polished and insightful, several notches above the fray of typical celebrity memoirs. The narrative unfolds through a series of lean chapters as she recounts the many career ascendency steps that led to her massively successful run on the Today Show and comparably disappointing stints as CBS Evening News anchor, talk show host, and Yahoo’s Global News Anchor. On the personal front, the author is candid in her recollections about her midlife adventures in the dating scene and deeply sorrowful and affecting regarding the experience of losing her husband to colon cancer as well as the deaths of other beloved family members, including her sister and parents. Throughout, Couric maintains a sharp yet cool-headed perspective on the broadcast news industry and its many outsized personalities and even how her celebrated role has diminished in recent years. “It’s AN ADJUSTMENT when the white-hot spotlight moves on,” she writes. “The ego gratification of being the It girl is intoxicating (toxic being the root of the word). When that starts to fade, it takes some getting used to—at least it did for me.” Readers who can recall when network news coverage and morning shows were not only relevant, but powerfully influential forces will be particularly drawn to Couric’s insights as she tracks how the media has evolved over recent decades and reflects on the negative effects of the increasing shift away from reliable sources of informed news coverage. The author also discusses recent important cultural and social revolutions, casting light on issues of race and sexual orientation, sexism, and the predatory behavior that led to the #MeToo movement. In that vein, she expresses her disillusionment with former co-host and friend Matt Lauer.
A sharp, entertaining view of the news media from one of its star players.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-316-53586-1
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
An intimate, stirring chronicle.
A daughter’s memories.
Booker Prize–winning Indian novelist Roy recounts a life of poverty and upheaval, defiance and triumph in an emotionally raw memoir, centered on her complicated relationship with her mother. Mary Roy, who raised her two children alone after divorcing her ne’er-do-well husband, was a volatile, willful woman, angry and abusive. In a patriarchal society that oppressed women socially, economically, and legally, she fought to make a life for herself and her family, working tirelessly to become “the owner, headmistress, and wild spirit” of an astoundingly successful school. The schoolchildren respectfully called her Mrs. Roy, and so did Arundhati and her brother. To escape her mother’s demands and tantrums, Arundhati, at age 18, decided to move permanently to Delhi, where she was studying architecture. After a brief marriage to a fellow student, she embarked on a long relationship with a filmmaker, which ignited her career as a writer: screenplays, essays, and at last the novel she titled The God of Small Things. The book became a sensation, earning her money and fame, as well as notoriety: She faced charges of “obscenity and corrupting public morality.” Arundhati sets her life in the context of India’s roiling politics, of which she became an outspoken critic. For many years, she writes, “I wandered through forests and river valleys, villages and border towns, to try to better understand my country. As I traveled, I wrote. That was the beginning of my restless, unruly life as a seditious, traitor-warrior.” Throughout, Mrs. Roy loomed large in her daughter’s life, and her death, in 2022, left the author overcome with grief. “I had grown into the peculiar shape that I am to accommodate her.” Without her, “I didn’t make sense to myself anymore.” Her candid memoir revives both an extraordinary woman and the tangled complexities of filial love.
An intimate, stirring chronicle.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781668094716
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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