An engaging portrait of resilience and drive, complicated by proximity to wealth and influence.
The California governor traces the family forces behind his political rise.
In this candid if carefully crafted memoir, Newsom revisits his fourth-generation San Francisco roots, lingering over the family mythology behind his political rise. After his parents’ separation, Newsom and his sister were raised by their mother, Tessa, who struggled financially; his father, William, an appellate court judge and at one time manager of the Gordon P. Getty Family Trust, remained a powerful presence. Newsom underscores the hardships that marked his youth—severe dyslexia and academic frustration—while pointing to the confidence and discipline he found on the basketball court and baseball field. Yet even as the likely presidential candidate casts himself as an underdog entrepreneur who built the PlumpJack Estate Winery and hospitality empire before entering politics, his origin story cannot entirely escape the glow of the Getty connection, which he acknowledges shadowed his rise from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to mayor and, eventually, governor. “In my life as a husband, father, and politician, the Getty connection would cloud and distort many things,” he writes. “In the eyes of the press, I was forever the ‘golden boy’ whose daddy had prospered because of his ties to the Gettys and now the son was simply following suit.” The tension between bootstrap resolve and inherited access to privilege becomes the book’s lingering subtext. Newsom surveys his record, which includes authorizing same-sex marriage in San Francisco ahead of national consensus and advancing legislation on climate policy, gun safety, and reproductive rights. He also acknowledges personal missteps, among them the collapse of his marriage to Kimberly Guilfoyle. He presents his later partnership with Jennifer Siebel and their four children as steadier ground. The memoir closes in 2024, before the next chapter of national turbulence, though he recounts a revealing 2018 meeting with President Donald Trump on Air Force One following the deadly wildfire in Paradise, California. That exchange, even more than the measured recitation of achievements, offers a sharper glimpse of the political instincts that define him.
An engaging portrait of resilience and drive, complicated by proximity to wealth and influence.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2026
ISBN: 9781984881939
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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 juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
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