A weak attempt to prove that Monroe wasn’t just a pretty face.
The story of Marilyn Monroe’s library, and what its holdings may have said about her.
Monroe’s centenary is in 2026, so it’s no surprise that many books and other media will mark the occasion. Some will be worthwhile, whereas others will feel more opportunistic. This book belongs in the latter category. Crowther, a British author, states that, for all the attention Monroe received, “one aspect of Monroe that received hardly any attention at all—mainly because it was assumed to be nonexistent—was her mind.” Among Monroe’s possessions when she died, “far and away the greatest number of objects belonging to Marilyn Monroe were her books,” more than 400 of them, from Russian classics to a lot of D.H. Lawrence and self-help books, including “at least four copies” of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet. Crowther wants to prove that Monroe had more going for her than “her beauty, her body, and her assumed ditziness.” Too often, however, she undermines her argument. Section headings are risible questions such as, “Did Marilyn read all her books?” Crowther devotes several pages to rightly excoriating men who made misogynistic comments about Monroe’s intelligence, but she does Monroe no favors by focusing on her outfit in a picture in which she reads Ulysses rather than attempting to find out Monroe’s thoughts on the book. Much of this volume highlights prominent figures in Monroe’s life rather than her. That and ample white space suggest Crowther couldn’t find enough evidence to support her claim. And she relies on speculation. She writes that Monroe owned no Dickens and theorizes that the reason may have been that Monroe wanted no reminders of her impoverished upbringing, before adding, “But caution is required: It doesn’t mean that she didn’t.” Monroe may very well have had a prodigious intellect, but one wouldn’t know it from the evidence presented here.
A weak attempt to prove that Monroe wasn’t just a pretty face.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781668098288
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Suffering unfathomable anguish, a mother memorializes her murdered son with great tenderness.
Remembering “Hershy.”
Three hundred and twenty-eight days. That’s how long Hersh Goldberg-Polin was held in captivity—tortured and starved by his captors in underground tunnels—before he was executed. He was 23 years old. In this unvarnished and heartrending account, Goldberg-Polin’s mother, Rachel, writes of the unending torment that she and her husband, Jon, endured after learning that their son had been kidnapped by Hamas terrorists during the attacks of October 7, 2023. Like so many other young people on that day, Hersh was attending a music festival in Israel—a celebration of love and unity. As Goldberg-Polin writes, her son was “the only American citizen kidnapped alive on October 7th who did not return alive.” In direct, plainspoken language that steers clear of politics, the author, a Jewish educator, recounts “being in a daze of the most indescribably sickening horror and fear, like nothing I had ever felt in my life. I remember my heart racing and feeling like I was in a permanent state of someone scaring me.” In addition to “shovel[ing] out my pain in the form of words,” she shares reminiscences of her son, as well as details that only a parent could notice. “His eyes were cookies,” she says of her “Hershy.” “I couldn’t find the pupils within the dark chocolate-brown irises.…He had a raspy voice, even when he was a baby.” And: “I thought he was hilarious; his sarcasm and humor were similar to mine.” Hersh and his sisters, Leebie and Orly, adapted well to life in Israel after the family moved from Richmond, Virginia. (Hersh was born in the Bay Area.) After being discharged from his service in the Israeli army as a combat medic, he was planning to journey around the world—a longtime dream of his. “So many people have come to love you, Hersh,” Jon Polin writes in the book’s afterword. And with one simple word that has the power to touch any heart, he signs off: “Dada.”
Suffering unfathomable anguish, a mother memorializes her murdered son with great tenderness.Pub Date: April 21, 2026
ISBN: 9798217198009
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2026
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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