A poetically profane, verbally adroit guide to life by two jokers who are smarter than they act.
Two Bronx natives with their own popular talk show offer a street-smart guide to modern-day survival.
In 2013, Desus Nice (Daniel Baker) and The Kid Mero (Joel Martinez) created a show that was unlike anything else on TV: two very funny guys riffing from a black and Latinx perspective with guests like Lin-Manuel Miranda, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Don Cheadle, and the Wu-Tang Clan. In their literary debut, Desus and Mero deliver a series of back-and-forth debates (“a fat sack of truth nuggets, a journey inside the minds of myself and Mero”) about such topics as masculinity, dating, drugs, and the criminal justice system. The format can be jarring at first—Mero is the wild card, unleashing his stream-of-consciousness lessons in ALL CAPS, including an introduction informing us exactly how much he cares what readers think. Desus is the straight man, often interpreting Mero’s insights or current condition: “Mero’s high,” he explains. “Not like, ‘Hey, I’m kinda fucked up but I’m all good.’ No. If you think you know people who get high, you’ve never met Mero.” Obviously, their advice must be taken with a grain of salt. Wearing good running shoes if you’re going to shoplift makes sense, but having your friend rob you and your date to save money probably isn’t the best idea. Besides being consistently funny, there are a few salient points about life “growing up brown in NYC,” such as Desus’ observation that he sees the NYPD as “just another rival gang, except they had permission to use their guns, so best to just avoid them altogether.” For advice on how to live when you’re broke or what it means to be “washed,” there’s both wisdom and hilarity here. The authors close with a Q&A speed round on porn, sneakers, and death, among other topics of interest.
A poetically profane, verbally adroit guide to life by two jokers who are smarter than they act.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-51233-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
A valuable contribution to our understanding of one of history’s most vital figures.
An epistolary memoir of Nelson Mandela’s prison years.
From August 1962 to February 1990, Mandela (1918-2013) was imprisoned by the apartheid state of South Africa. During his more than 27 years in prison, the bulk of which he served on the notorious Robben Island prison off the shores of Cape Town, he wrote thousands of letters to family and friends, lawyers and fellow African National Congress members, prison officials, and members of the government. Heavily censored for both content and length, letters from Robben Island and South Africa’s other political prisons did not always reach their intended targets; when they did, the censorship could make them virtually unintelligible. To assemble this vitally important collection, Venter (A Free Mind: Ahmed Kathrada's Notebook from Robben Island, 2006, etc.), a longtime Johannesburg-based editor and journalist, pored through these letters in various public and private archives across South Africa and beyond as well as Mandela’s own notebooks, in which he transcribed versions of these letters. The result is a necessary, intimate portrait of the great leader. The man who emerges is warm and intelligent and a savvy, persuasive, and strategic thinker. During his life, Mandela was a loving husband and father, a devotee of the ANC’s struggle, and capable of interacting with prominent statesmen and the ANC’s rank and file. He was not above flattery or hard-nosed steeliness toward his captors as suited his needs, and he was always yearning for freedom, not only—or even primarily—for himself, but rather for his people, a goal that is the constant theme of this collection and was the consuming vision of his entire time as a prisoner. Venter adds tremendous value with his annotations and introductions to the work as a whole and to the book’s various sections.
A valuable contribution to our understanding of one of history’s most vital figures.Pub Date: July 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63149-117-7
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
One of the NBA’s 50 greatest players scores another basket—a deeply personal one.
A basketball legend reflects on his life in the game and a life lived in the “nightmare of endlessly repetitive and constant pain, agony, and guilt.”
Walton (Nothing but Net, 1994, etc.) begins this memoir on the floor—literally: “I have been living on the floor for most of the last two and a half years, unable to move.” In 2008, he suffered a catastrophic spinal collapse. “My spine will no longer hold me,” he writes. Thirty-seven orthopedic injuries, stemming from the fact that he had malformed feet, led to an endless string of stress fractures. As he notes, Walton is “the most injured athlete in the history of sports.” Over the years, he had ground his lower extremities “down to dust.” Walton’s memoir is two interwoven stories. The first is about his lifelong love of basketball, the second, his lifelong battle with injuries and pain. He had his first operation when he was 14, for a knee hurt in a basketball game. As he chronicles his distinguished career in the game, from high school to college to the NBA, he punctuates that story with a parallel one that chronicles at each juncture the injuries he suffered and overcame until he could no longer play, eventually turning to a successful broadcasting career (which helped his stuttering problem). Thanks to successful experimental spinal fusion surgery, he’s now pain-free. And then there’s the music he loves, especially the Grateful Dead’s; it accompanies both stories like a soundtrack playing off in the distance. Walton tends to get long-winded at times, but that won’t be news to anyone who watches his broadcasts, and those who have been afflicted with lifelong injuries will find the book uplifting and inspirational. Basketball fans will relish Walton’s acumen and insights into the game as well as his stories about players, coaches (especially John Wooden), and games, all told in Walton’s fervent, witty style.
One of the NBA’s 50 greatest players scores another basket—a deeply personal one.Pub Date: March 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4767-1686-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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