A memorable, historically grounded look at a unique tale in American politics.
Smith tells the story of an African refugee’s journey to America and his later participation in Montana state politics.
Wilmot Collins was born in 1963 in Liberia and was in high school when the nation’s president, William Tolbert Jr., was overthrown in a violent coup. By 1986, the college graduate had witnessed brutal treatment of campus protesters and had “come to realize that Liberia was not a safe place to live.” By the 1990s, it was time for Collins and his wife, Maddie, to find a way out. The two eventually made their way to Ghana, but their ultimate destination was Montana, where Maddie had attended high school as an exchange student while staying with a host family. She appealed to that family for help, and she was able to enter the United States first, in 1991, with Collins joining her in Helena, Montana, three years later. Although Wilmot initially faced bigotry from some locals (including “KKK go back to Africa!” graffiti on his garage), he and his family began “to develop a growing base of support in Helena.” In the 2010s, he became involved in local politics, despite the fact that some in the political world viewed him with “disdain and suspicion.” Collins went on to be twice elected mayor of Helena, in 2017 and 2021—the first person of color to be elected mayor of a Montana city—and he once ran for a U.S. Senate seat. Over the course of this book, Smith effectively details Collins’ extraordinary journey by providing plenty of welcome historical context, particularly when describing the “barbarity unleashed by the Liberian Civil War.” Collins’ survival of such conditions, and his accomplished later life as a progressive politician, together make for a compelling story. Some passages have a lightweight style that brings to mind a magazine profile, rather than a full-length, exploratory biography, such as “Paying it forward was much more than a feel-good catch phrase for Wilmot.” The book as a whole, though, does justice to a distinctive personal story.
A memorable, historically grounded look at a unique tale in American politics.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9780700642991
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Univ. Press of Kansas
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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 juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
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