Anyone concerned with the planet’s ecological future will want to spend time with this excellent book.
The eminent traveler and naturalist delivers a combination of memoir and manifesto, the first leisurely, the second earnest.
Now 94, Attenborough, longtime nature documentarian and a fluent, always interesting writer, recounts growing up in the countryside of Leicester, “in the middle of England,” the kind of place where a kid could hop on a bicycle and spend a day poking around. While his older brother, later a distinguished filmmaker and actor, got involved in local drama societies, the author found himself fascinated by “turning over a stone and looking at the animals,” and he determined that “the most important knowledge was that which brought an understanding of how the natural world worked.” Little did he know that the natural world even then was on the edge of precipitous decline, with catastrophic loss of species, habitats, and biodiversity—and, he notes, “for life to truly thrive on this planet, there must be immense biodiversity.” The converse is true: Diminish biodiversity, and life does not decline but instead begins to go pear-shaped. “We have a choice to make,” he insists: We can pretend that nothing is happening, live out our lives as best we can, and leave it for the next generations to worry about, “or we could change.” The recipe for change constitutes a plan of attack for returning to the Holocene from the Anthropocene, from biological impoverishment to wealth. A critical ingredient is that biodiversity, a critical habitat the forests of which humankind “is such a determined and effective destroyer.” Another critical ingredient is “to change the way in which we power our activities,” building a world in which carbon-free energy technologies replace fossil fuels. We are far along in terms of engineering and economics but far behind overall because of “the abstract force we might call vested interests.” Recognizing that we are at a tipping point, Attenborough is refreshingly optimistic, noting that one thing humans do well is solve problems.
Anyone concerned with the planet’s ecological future will want to spend time with this excellent book.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5387-1998-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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: Jan. 1, 2026
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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