An illuminating, warmhearted souvenir of a tumultuous era.
A portrait of the novelist as a young artist.
Before he became an award-winning fiction writer, Johnson was a professional gag cartoonist and was so well respected at the trade that he hosted a how-to-draw TV series for a PBS station. This anthology is a compilation of both previously anthologized drawings and some never before included in book form. It doubles as both gallery and memoir, as the chronologically arranged drawings (beginning with a 1965 “pictorial resume” from his senior year at Evanston High School in Illinois) are interspersed with passages by the author describing his growth from a childhood so obsessed with drawing pictures on a home blackboard that “my knees and the kitchen floor were covered with layers of chalk” to contributing cartoons first to his college newspaper at Southern Illinois University and eventually to the Chicago Tribune and to gaining the attention of John H. Johnson, legendary publisher of such Black-oriented magazines as Ebony, Jet, and Negro Digest (later Black World). The cartoons are blunt, in-your-face, and, often, still funny-and-fresh lampoons of racial mores and manners. The earlier ones from the late 1960s through early ’70s reflect the post–civil rights era militancy and conflicts with the police. In one, one Black man says to another, “You’d be surprised how many people mistake me for [Black Power advocate] H. Rap Brown” as they’re walking down a city street while, just behind them, a cordon of armed-and-uniformed Whites make their way toward them. In another, two Black men are in a car pulled over by a White motorcycle cop as one says to the other, “Look moderate.” In another, one freshly minted Black college graduate says to another, “Well, I guess now I’ll see if Standard Oil or the Bank of America needs a consultant with a degree in Black History.” For those with knowledge or memories of that latter topic, these crafty single-panel drawings resonate with rueful nostalgia, roughhousing wit, and, as noted earlier, some eerie convergences with present-day turmoil. Now, as then, Johnson’s efforts here are intended to soothe with drollness as much as sting with recognition. “Like the best haiku,” he writes, “where a thought or feeling is perfectly expressed in just a few lines and is instantly understood, a well-done cartoon can often lead to an epiphany or ‘Aha!’ moment of laughter and sudden insight.”
An illuminating, warmhearted souvenir of a tumultuous era.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-68137-673-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: New York Review Comics
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2022
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.
What hasn’t legendary legal eagle Grisham tried yet? How about a thriller about serial kidnapping and international terrorism.
When Paul and Chelsea Tanner disappear during a day trip on their Paris honeymoon, their abductors demand a ransom of $2 million from Chelsea’s wealthy parents, and a few days later the same sum from Paul’s much less well-heeled parents. After orthopedist Lowell Clayburn, Chelsea’s father, ponies up the ransom without breathing a word to the authorities, his daughter is promptly released. But even though Paul’s parents sell their home, liquidate their assets, and borrow money from the Clayburns to meet the kidnappers’ demands, the villains hold on to Paul anyway. Asked whether he’s ever seen such an outcome in a double kidnapping, FBI deputy director Andrew Strong tells Lowell: “No, this is a new one.” But it’s not, as Strong knows all too well; it’s the third such active case, all involving honeymooning couples whose bridegrooms had served in the armed forces. After masterfully drawing readers in with his bare-knuckle account of the Tanners’ abduction and the attempt by their families and the CIA to tell the lies required to keep caring friends and the rapacious press at bay, Grisham effortlessly switches gears to follow CIA agent Rae Claire Russo and Stuart Nash, a former Department of Justice prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay who agrees to marry her so they can serve as bait for the kidnappers, whose motives include justice and revenge as well as cold hard cash. So much for the imprisoned Paul’s wistful reflection that “hopefully, it was only about money.”
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780385550543
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2026
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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