A must-have treasury for diehard Dolly fans and armchair fashionistas.
The sparkly story of country music’s most recognizable woman told through an archive of outfits.
Featuring fringe, vibrant color, and rhinestones, Parton’s fashion sense has always contributed to her immense popularity. In this effervescent, full-color volume, Parton, along with veteran music and pop-culture writer George-Warren and Seaver, the director of archive services for the author, recounts the vivid tales behind the clothes. Blocks of text run alongside photographs as Parton looks back on her poor childhood, when she was fascinated with clothing and creating makeup from foraged household items. Inspired by Mae West, she writes about many of her pivotal career moments, including her move to Nashville in 1964 to become a country musician, despite warnings to tone down her image. “From early on, I loved the big hair and makeup,” she writes, “the long nails, the high heels, the flashy clothes, and—as soon as I could afford them—the rhinestones!” Passion is the common element throughout this graciously and generously illuminated book, commemorating her celebrity, zest for sparkling fashion, and identity as a funny, outspoken, effortlessly charming personality. A woman who wins over audiences with bubbly giggles, candid opinions, and a bedazzled, often risk-taking wardrobe, Parton moves with ease through the design innovations that have marked her decadeslong career as a music and fashion trailblazer. From album cover shots to photos from TV and movie appearances and award ceremonies, Parton’s personal style shines brightly as she shares the intricate details behind the glittered fringe, coiffured wigs, rhinestone stilettos, and glamorous designer collaborations that have made her wardrobe unique. She also writes frankly about how the weight of those outfits could be overwhelming, often making it a challenge to perform on stage. From beneath its splashy hot-pink cover emerges an unforgettable personal and professional history of a beloved country music performer whose outfits “reflect my innermost self, my own personal truth.”
A must-have treasury for diehard Dolly fans and armchair fashionistas.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9781984862129
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ten Speed Press
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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
A substantive, dishy, entertaining glimpse into Hollywood royalty.
The Oscar-winning actor and producer opens up about filmmaking, sex, drugs, and escaping his father’s shadow.
Despite its casual, just-shooting-the-breeze title, Douglas’ memoir is detailed and precision-engineered to entertain; as a filmmaker who won his first Oscar as a producer (for 1975’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), he knows a successful story needs clarity and conflict to work. The son of screen legend Kirk Douglas, he was well-acquainted with celebrity at an early age; witnessing his parents’ divorce, he spent much of his youth acting out. (He paid for college by selling weed by the suitcase-load.) After years of stalls and failures, he broke through on TV with the ’70s cop show The Streets of San Francisco. But small-screen work (along with his nepo-baby status) made breaking into big-screen roles harder until 1984’s Romancing the Stone made him a star and 1987’s Wall Street earned him a second Oscar. Douglas is candid about his industry struggles—like endless budget fights and betraying his father, who was promised the lead in Cuckoo’s Nest—and his reputation as a lothario. (Though married, he had an on-set affair with Kathleen Turner during Stone.) He’s also open about his alcohol and cocaine abuse, leading to a rehab stint, echoed in his son Cameron’s own struggles with addiction and recovery. He’s comfortable discussing controversies—the LGBTQ+ community’s protests of 1992’s Basic Instinct, his proto-MAGA character in 1993’s Falling Down—and plainly keeps an enemies list. But this story arc leaves him triumphant, with a loving wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones), his family, his health (after a cancer scare), and a late-career Emmy for playing Liberace in Behind the Candelabra (2013).
A substantive, dishy, entertaining glimpse into Hollywood royalty.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9781538782224
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
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