A fun, thorough, and considered appreciation of a major pop act.
A wide-ranging cultural study of the Swedish pop icons.
This book by Swedish music journalist Gradvall is comprehensive—he had access to all four ABBA members—but structurally irreverent, taking its cues from Craig Brown’s history-in-fragments method. So rather than start with biographies of each member (songwriters Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson and singers Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad), it opens with the group’s collapse in 1982, filtered through its single “The Day Before You Came,” then skips to an exploration of Sweden’s dansbandvocal music before hopscotching around its key musical moments and influences. Good strategy: It shakes the stiffness out of a music biography of a pop group that was a little off-kilter, from the broken English of its lyrics to the lurking somberness of even its jauntiest tunes. (The book’s subtitle, Melancholy Undercover, refers to Andersson’s assessment of the predominant characteristic of their music.) Gradvall’s approach also reveals unusual moments for a group that seemed carefully machined: the tweaks to Eurovision contest rules that made “Waterloo” their first major hit, the tensions between dansbandand the ersatz-American raggareculture that the group exploited, the importance of LGBTQ+ culture in keeping the group relevant after their breakup, the backlash against the group as pompous and irrelevant when Sweden’s politics took a leftward turn, and various odd cultural collisions (to make a 1977 Australian tour viable, they agreed to a kind of cultural exchange program that made AC/DC big in Sweden). Despite all the interviews, the “Abbas” (as he calls them) remain somewhat mysterious, avoiding details about divorces and other matters that might tamper too much with their legacy. But the story is leavened by Gradvall’s personal observations of how influential the group was in their native country, especially their breakthrough 1976 album, Arrival, which “sounds as if the sun had signed a record contract.”
A fun, thorough, and considered appreciation of a major pop act.Pub Date: June 17, 2025
ISBN: 9781250379856
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 21, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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