An encouraging remembrance with an emphasis on lessons learned.
Rosengarten shares the ups and downs of his entrepreneurial career in this memoir.
They say if you can make it in New York City, you can make it anywhere—but doing so in the tumultuous era of John Lindsay’s mayoral administration during the late 1960s and early ’70s was especially difficult. The author’s background, which includes bipolar disorder, electroshock therapy, dyslexia, and no college degree, made things even more challenging, but he persevered and found outlets for his creativity in a series of entrepreneurial projects. His greatest claim to fame is the leisure suit, which he created in 1971; the genesis of this era-defining fashionwear was a knit fabric he found on the racks at the textile mill where we worked. The leisure suit changed the men’s fashion industry seemingly overnight, appearing on theTonight Show and in the pages of GQ. “You wouldn’t wear a regular suit in a restaurant or at a party,” Rosengarten writes. “That was for the ‘squares.’” Its meteoric rise and precipitous fall are documented here, as are the author’s lesser-known projects, such as the Rainbow Reader: colored screens that aimed to help people with dyslexia to read with greater ease. Each chapter tells a singular entrepreneurial story, related in a straightforward manner without rancor or score-settling: “Feel free to enjoy them in sequential order or by which interests you most,” the author recommends. The prose isn’t as inspired as Rosengarten’s projects, such as his forays into real estate, which included converting empty industrial buildings into lofts and building the Bowery Hotel, “an iconic New York City destination for A-List celebrities, real New Yorkers, and tourists,” and a Long Island–based solar farm that reflected his newfound “environmental-based goals.” However, the author’s story may inspire budding or even experienced entrepreneurs, as along with his successes, he had several projects go bust: “You can learn from both the good and the bad,” he writes. “It all just makes you stronger.”
An encouraging remembrance with an emphasis on lessons learned.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9781637556160
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Amplify Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
