A quick if intellectually complex read describes a spiritual journey rooted in Einstein’s Princeton.
Journalist and English professor Clovis, who won an Outstanding Book Award from the National Association of Black Journalists for an earlier book, returns with a poetic work.
A lot goes on at the Firestone Library at Princeton University, and not in the expected way. For starters, there are the “Virtual Library and Librarians,” who are “aware of your every move,” and “the aroma of an herbal tea at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, a racist and segregated place,” suggests upfront that readers will go down a rabbit hole into a world that is at once surrealistic and contemporary. You must “slow life down enough” to understand what you read in a work that brings together Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, chess, and physics. At one point, “you find your body in the quantum field,” or being pulled through a chessboard floor by quantum forces. At another you are in Einstein’s classroom, a “special place” hidden on the Princeton campus. Abrupt surprises are in store as things take ever more surreal turns and readers are reminded that “space and time exist in dual waves and your mind will play tricks on you as you travel.” In addition to that black hole that opens up on a chessboard floor, there’s a reference to the 2022 mass shooting in Buffalo, New York. Readers without a basic grounding in physics and Lewis Carroll may feel lost until the book reveals that there’s a spiritual side to their journey: They must remember that “it is LOVE that allows us to step our way through.” They must also realize that “YOU are an endless blessing in being as ONE with God in synchronicity.”
With fewer than 100 pages, this ambitious work is brief. No sooner has the herbal tea at the Mad Hatter’s party been served than the adventure is just about over. The short length and fierce energy keep everything in sometimes-chaotic motion. All of it relates to “A beacon of light” that “shines through the darkness to comfort YOU called, insight, inspiration, and synchronicity in the flow of energy.” Amid clichés like that “beacon of light,” however, there’s plenty of food for thought in comments such as: “Becoming ONE with the Divine, YOU are transformed by this journey.” Some of the physics terms, like quantum field and quantum space, if essential to the author’s aims, may sail over the heads of nonscientific readers. At best, those terms only nod to science instead of giving a nuanced picture of it, and while the early reference to racism and segregation suggests that the work may be making a statement about them, it isn’t clear what it is. Similarly, the only piece of Einstein’s work that appears in the text (other than an allusion to relativity) is his most obvious equation: e=mc2. Its inclusion adds little to the story and may leave readers feeling that there must be more to be found in poking around Einstein’s classroom. Nevertheless, the book moves with lightning speed, and readers interested in cosmic questions will have a fast-paced opportunity to consider what it means to be “ONE with God in synchronicity.”
A quick if intellectually complex read describes a spiritual journey rooted in Einstein’s Princeton.Pub Date: June 10, 2022
ISBN: 979-8765229675
Page Count: 80
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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