A well-researched and disturbing investigation into a teenage sex cult that rocked Mexico’s entertainment industry.
Before Jeffrey Epstein, there was Sergio Andrade.
Investigative journalist and author McDougall (Born To Run, 2009) provides a shocking, in-depth account of the sordid events surrounding the wildly successful Mexican music producer known as Mr. Midas and his protégé, Gloria Trevi, a musical sensation nicknamed the Mexican Madonna. Together, they were accused of operating a globe-trotting sex cult in the 1990s that victimized teenage girls and produced a number of babies—one abandoned near death at a hospital in Brazil, and one who mysteriously died. Portraying himself as something of a swashbuckling reporter willing to go any length to get a story, McDougall chronicles in stomach-churning detail how poverty-stricken families and their starry-eyed young daughters were lured with promises of fame and fortune, only to be sexually exploited. In the process, McDougall also faults Mexico’s largest broadcast company, Televisa, for creating a flawed model for a star-making system that resulted in an unsafe environment for young, impressionable girls. “The Televisa method for creating stars is to seclude young girls in singing and dancing schools, then have them emerge a few years later with a new name and appearance,” McDougall writes. “Not surprisingly, these star schools are ripe for abuse by the men who run them.” The author’s dogged journalism skills land him separate jailhouse interviews with Andrade and Trevi while they await their trials, but they prove too slick and adept at gaslighting to reveal much of substance; Trevi spent four years in prison and was acquitted in 2004. Instead, it’s McDougall’s reporting on the victims, particularly the brave and forthright Aline Hernández, that make the book such a gripping read. McDougall writes that Andrade was able to entice and groom one victim after another and then, in a sickening twist, groom them to recruit younger girls.
A well-researched and disturbing investigation into a teenage sex cult that rocked Mexico’s entertainment industry.Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9798217008285
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Vintage
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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