Tickled to find himself a national treasure at 99, Van Dyke takes some of his own advice: “Find Your Passion in Your Past.”
Anecdotes and advice from a long, happy, and fairly familiar life.
The third memoir from Van Dyke covers similar ground as the previous two; now he is approaching 100 instead of 90, but before that, not much has changed. (That’s the thing about the past.) What’s new is the angle: the hundred chapters are titled for their takeaway: from “Don’t Act Your Age” and “Make Your Own Rules” to “You Can’t Protect Your Survivors” (a sad vignette about the late Gene Hackman) and “Find Your Arlene.” Van Dyke’s 46-years-younger wife, Arlene, is the sine qua non of his life and this book: “Well over three-quarters of the memories in this book were foggy in my brain but crystal clear in hers,” due to many previous retellings. These recollections include stories of shoveling ice and coal in pre–World War II Danville, Illinois, 15-cent movies, being edged out of a spot on Ed Sullivan’s show by President Harry Truman’s daughter’s tepid opera singing, and recollections from the sets of Bye Bye Birdie, Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The New Dick Van Dyke Show, and many more. If the upbeat tone of his preceding books prompted some critical calls for more conflict, emotion, and introspection, those are answered here by stories with a darker tone. These include a phone call from Cary Grant on LSD, an anxious encounter with a possibly predatory elementary school teacher, a long-running on-set prank involving walnuts, and a 20-year toothache, as yet not fully resolved. “Remember Honestly” corrects a childhood anecdote told in the previous book with more candor about the extreme stinginess of Van Dyke’s father. “I was so intent on putting a smile on my life experiences that I nudged the little hint of darkness out of the story.” In addition to his wife, the supporting cast includes the author’s 73-year-old son, Barry, and his 41-year-old personal assistant, Jimmy, who uses they/them pronouns and has a second career as a WWE-style wrestler—quite a breath of fresh air. Among the most poignant chapters are “You Will Not Be Alone,” which recounts the 1987 death of Van Dyke’s first grandchild at the age of 13, and “Read While You Can,” in which we learn that advanced dry macular degeneration has ended his life as a reader. Not as a writer, though!
Tickled to find himself a national treasure at 99, Van Dyke takes some of his own advice: “Find Your Passion in Your Past.”Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781538777909
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 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
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