Occasionally digressive but worthy addition to the literature surrounding wolves.
A writer meditates on the place of the wolf in the world and in the imagination.
“I am not an academic nor a scientist, I am just one animal trying to see another.” So writes Berry, who opens with an unhappy story of a wolf that was collared by biologists and was clearly known to them yet was gunned down outside a small town in northeastern Oregon. Some 30 wolves have died at human hands in Oregon since the Yellowstone wolf reintroduction program began. From Yellowstone, individual animals and small packs have radiated outward to Idaho, Montana, and the eastern Pacific Northwest. Along the course of her narrative, Berry examines both their movements and the reactions of humans, sometimes based on the supposed need to protect livestock from predation but mostly out of fear. Humans fear what they don’t know, and wolves certainly count, even though the incidence of wolves’ attacking humans is extremely rare. Wolves, conversely, have every reason to fear humans; says one Canadian biologist whom Berry interviews, “If you experience something life-threatening, you are a different animal the very next day.” The author ranges widely among the body of biological facts and mythology to paint a portrait of wolves that sometimes threatens to turn into a data dump, with a page here devoted to Indo-European linkages of wolves to unruly teenage warrior initiates and a page there to the psychological origins of lycanthropy. Even if the material is sometimes scattered, Berry offers some intriguing insights: “What if the werewolf is not shackle but solution?” While her book doesn’t quite measure up to those by Barry Lopez and Rick McIntyre, it’s less a field report—though Berry does travel into wolf country, meaning mostly human country populated by men, mostly, who would rather “shoot, shovel, and shut up” than welcome wolves back—than a kind of extended essay on what wolves mean.
Occasionally digressive but worthy addition to the literature surrounding wolves.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2023
ISBN: 9781250821621
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2023
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
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
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