Perhaps the most successful of the frontier outlaws, Cassidy receives an entertaining and likely definitive account.
A lively, necessarily speculative biography of the notorious desperado.
Journalist Leerhsen, former executive editor of Sports Illustrated, correctly points out that while the hit 1969 movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford, made Butch Cassidy’s (1866-1908) name familiar to most readers, Cassidy and his circle did not often put pen to paper, so contemporary evidence consists largely of legal documents, police reports, and newspaper accounts of his crimes. Modern biographers often fill the gaps with fiction, personal theories, or highly suspicious memories from Cassidy’s descendants, and movies muddy the water with a romantic portrait of life on the frontier when in fact it was usually miserable. The eldest of 13 children of a hardscrabble rancher, Cassidy had his first brush with the law at age 12, and he left home permanently just before he turned 18 to take up a life of crime. “Crime” on the frontier mostly involved stealing cattle or horses; it was rarely lucrative, and Cassidy regularly worked as a ranch hand to make ends meet. After years of low-paid labor, petty thievery, a prison term, and companions with similar loose morals, added to a talent for leadership, he took up a full-time life of crime, and newspapers happily recorded a series of spectacular bank and train robberies. This spree lasted only a few years before advancing technology and the end of the frontier made this life too risky. No psychopath like Billy the Kid or Jesse James, Leerhsen’s Cassidy is likable and mostly sensible. He escaped to Argentina in 1901 with considerable cash and a companion (the Sundance Kid, a more shadowy figure). For several years, they apparently worked as honest ranchers but returned to robbery in 1905, when they “dropped any pretense of being law-abiding citizens.” They moved to Chile and Bolivia, where, cornered by soldiers in 1908, they probably committed suicide, an event absent from the movie.
Perhaps the most successful of the frontier outlaws, Cassidy receives an entertaining and likely definitive account.Pub Date: July 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1748-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
BOOK TO SCREEN
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
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
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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