A rich account of the world’s wealthiest person.
From boy genius to man-child.
On Dec. 23, 2008, days before Tesla faced bankruptcy, NASA awarded Musk’s SpaceX a $1.6 billion contract. Borrowing money from SpaceX allowed the tech mogul to keep his car company afloat. “Thank you, Santa,” Musk tells Father Christmas in Cunningham’s graphic biography of the billionaire. Santa Claus’ reply: “Thank the US taxpayers. It’s their money.” This satirical exchange gets to the heart of Cunningham’s argument: that Musk, as talented as he might be, owes a lot of his success to the generosity of Uncle Sam—the same entity that Musk is now decimating, slashing budgets as head of the Department of Government Efficiency. Much of Cunningham’s book will be familiar to many readers; the British cartoonist credits numerous news articles and cites, among his sources, biographies by Walter Isaacson and Ashlee Vance. Nonetheless, to see Musk’s life story laid out so concisely, highlighted by striking details, makes for a vivid narrative. This is a powerful cartoon portrait of a cartoonish figure, an extraordinarily wealthy man with boyish traits: making fast cars, playing with rockets, smoking pot during a podcast interview, throwing fits, lashing out at strangers online, and jumping up and down at political rallies, his devotion to the American president prominently displayed on a baseball cap that he also wears to White House meetings. Cunningham doesn’t try to psychoanalyze his subject, but he does tell of this South African native’s embrace of far-right causes and “longtermism,” in which you “believe yourself to be a morally superior person” who focuses not on present-day human needs but on humanity’s future. And then there is Musk’s transgender child, who has disowned him—after which he railed against the “woke-mind virus” and how it will “destroy civilization.” Who’s to know where Musk’s tale will lead next? But this book gives readers a good starting point to track what has been a supremely improbable journey.
A rich account of the world’s wealthiest person.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9781644215227
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Seven Stories
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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
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