An insightful portrait of exceptional heroism amid deeply embedded racism.
A deft new account of “one of the most decorated units in American history.”
While the Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team continues to produce admiring histories, this definitive account tells a larger story. Historian Brown notes that Japanese immigrants began arriving in the U.S. in the late 19th century. Despite brutal working conditions and rampant racist discrimination, many prospered. In Hawaii, nearly one-third of which was populated by Japanese Americans in 1941, they suffered less discrimination and developed a more assertive culture and even a distinctive pidgin language. Matters were less hospitable on the mainland, where many state laws forbade noncitizens from owning property. Few readers will fail to squirm at events following Pearl Harbor. In the outrage that followed, most Americans and their leaders assumed that Japanese Americans (but not German or Italian Americans) were potential saboteurs. Declaring a large area of the Pacific coast a Japanese “exclusion zone,” the government removed more than 100,000 Japanese Americans to concentration camps further east. They were forced to leave behind any possessions they couldn’t bring with them, including homes and farms, and most were stolen or occupied and not returned after the war. In 1943, pressed for manpower, the Army formed a volunteer unit that became the 442nd. Despite the legend that young men from the camps rushed to serve, the great majority came from Hawaii. Joining brought few perks, and Brown diligently records the opposition, although activists remained a small minority. Although this is familiar ground, the author delivers a superb description of the unit’s training and unparalleled battlefield achievements. Despite their remarkable accomplishments, returning 442nd soldiers and their families faced the same boycotts, threats, and violence they suffered after Pearl Harbor. Brown does an excellent job capturing this regrettable historical episode, noting how it “would take decades for the country’s leadership to broadly recognize and formally address the wrong that had been done to them.”
An insightful portrait of exceptional heroism amid deeply embedded racism.Pub Date: May 11, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-525-55740-1
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 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: tomorrow
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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