A welcome first step in making a legend among her sister comics better known to a wider audience.
Long-overdue assessment of a pioneering female comic.
For many years, Jean Carroll (1911-2010) was one of the few women headlining a comedy act in vaudeville and, once her husband and partner was drafted in 1943, probably the only one working as a “single.” The author of this valuable if decidedly academic study opens with a 2006 tribute to Carroll at the Friars Club to spotlight her enormous influence on subsequent generations of female comics; Joy Behar, Lily Tomlin, Rita Rudner, and Anne Meara were among those testifying to the thrill of seeing her on The Ed Sullivan Show and elsewhere in the 1950s. From an immigrant Jewish family, Carroll was onstage before she turned 11 and already tough enough to get paid by threatening to expose a rigged amateur contest. She seamlessly made the transition from vaudeville to radio to television and nightclub stand-up comedy, along the way transitioning from playing stereotypical “Dumb Dora” bits and joking about her looks to unabashedly presenting herself as a polished, attractive, assertive woman whose jokes, frequently at the expense of her husband, were based on personal observations and delivered in a conversational style that was new at the time. Overbeke, an assistant professor of theater at Columbia College in Chicago, sketches Carroll’s career in the context of an evolving show business landscape, noting that “the changing venues altered Carroll’s work and the overall genre of stand-up comedy.” She also focuses on the way Carroll challenged stereotypes about women in general and Jewish women in particular, “demonstrat[ing] that Jewish femininity was compatible with sophistication and even glamour.” More excerpts from Carroll’s monologues and fewer academic catchphrases like “representation” and “double coding” would make this book more appealing to a general readership, but anyone interested in the history of comedy will find valuable material here.
A welcome first step in making a legend among her sister comics better known to a wider audience.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9781479818150
Page Count: 320
Publisher: New York Univ.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A smart, rewarding consideration of football’s popularity—and eventual downfall.
A wide-ranging writer on his football fixation.
Is our biggest spectator sport “a practical means for understanding American life”? Klosterman thinks so, backing it up with funny, thought-provoking essays about TV coverage, ethical quandaries, and the rules themselves. Yet those who believe it’s a brutal relic of a less enlightened era need only wait, “because football is doomed.” Marshalling his customary blend of learned and low-culture references—Noam Chomsky, meet AC/DC—Klosterman offers an “expository obituary” of a game whose current “monocultural grip” will baffle future generations. He forecasts that economic and social forces—the NFL’s “cultivation of revenue,” changes in advertising, et al.—will end its cultural centrality. It’s hard to imagine a time when “football stops and no one cares,” but Klosterman cites an instructive precedent. Horse racing was broadly popular a century ago, when horses were more common in daily life. But that’s no longer true, and fandom has plummeted. With youth participation on a similar trajectory, Klosterman foresees a time when fewer people have a personal connection to football, rendering it a “niche” pursuit. Until then, the sport gives us much to consider, with Klosterman as our well-informed guide. Basketball is more “elegant,” but “football is the best television product ever,” its breaks between plays—“the intensity and the nothingness,” à la Sartre—provide thrills and space for reflection or conversation. For its part, the increasing “intellectual density” of the game, particularly for quarterbacks, mirrors a broader culture marked by an “ongoing escalation of corporate and technological control.” Klosterman also has compelling, counterintuitive takes on football gambling, GOAT debates, and how one major college football coach reminds him of “Laura Ingalls Wilder’s much‑loved Little House novels.” A beloved sport’s eventual death spiral has seldom been so entertaining.
A smart, rewarding consideration of football’s popularity—and eventual downfall.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593490648
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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