Basketball fans will enjoy Oakley’s stories about the game’s biggest stars and his opinions about them.
The hard-nosed former professional basketball star shares his bold outlook on life as well as wild tales on and off the court.
Oakley, who plied his trade in the NBA from 1985 to 2004, wants readers to remember three things: He’s loyal, he’s honest, and if you wrong him, he will never forget. Also, he’s good friends with his former teammate Michael Jordan. Still close today, they have always bonded over their no-nonsense attitudes and approaches toward the game. The same cannot be said for Oakley’s relationships with many other players of the era. The book is packed with Oakley’s plainspoken disdain for former players, most notably Charles Barkley, who gets a whole chapter: “Barkley and his Big Mouth.” Among the other players and coaches on the receiving end of Oakley’s unforgiving eye include Lamar Odom, Dennis Rodman, Lenny Wilkins, and Tyrone Hill. LeBron James is one of the few exceptions, a genuine star whom Oakley befriended when James was just 17. Whether the author is recounting how he tricked an opposing player into drinking too much the night before a playoff game or bemoaning the lack of physicality in today’s NBA, he walks readers through his career with unvarnished honesty. Many of Oakley’s entertaining stories go beyond basketball; the strongest sections involve amusing run-ins with a wide range of celebrities, from Judge Mathis to Spike Lee. Oakley also has a serious side, on display when he discusses his friendship with George Floyd. “As a Black man in the United States I, too, have experienced police brutality and harassment before, but never to this extreme,” he writes. “To watch the video and hear George desperately calling out to his mother for help was horrific.” Throughout, Oakley emphasizes his role as a staunch defender of his teammates and doing what he thinks is right, never passing up the opportunity to vilify those who don’t live up to his code.
Basketball fans will enjoy Oakley’s stories about the game’s biggest stars and his opinions about them.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982175-64-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 29, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2021
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: yesterday
SEEN & HEARD
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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