by Jennifer Banks ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 2, 2023
This ambitious thesis will appeal to readers of thematically linked historical biographies.
A studied exploration of birth’s myriad forms through the lens of the lives and work of seven poets, novelists, activists, and philosophers.
Banks, a senior executive editor at Yale University Press, uses the word natality not according to its definition as birthright but rather as synonymous with birth and, as Hannah Arendt described it, the “miracle that saves the world.” Banks breaks her debut book into portraits of Arendt, Friedrich Nietzsche, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, Sojourner Truth, Adrienne Rich, and Toni Morrison. Collectively, writes the author, “these are people wrestling with natality throughout their lives, exploring how their experiences with birth and their ideas about it shaped what they thought and how they lived.” These seven people, Banks explains, “were all shaped by birth and they in turn have shaped our collective understanding of what it means to be born human. Birth helped them see how we are more than history’s bi-products; we are instead creative participants in history, nature, and time.” The author’s contribution isn’t providing new information about her subjects but rather illuminative, variable insights via her particular, occasionally amorphous lens. Regarding Morrison’s switch to Catholicism at age 12, Banks writes, “Conversion involved baptism, a rebirth through the church’s holy waters. It also entailed a renaming. Other people give us names at birth, but in a chosen rebirth we can name ourselves, as Sojourner Truth and Nietzsche did.” The strongest sections concentrate on Arendt and Rich. Of the former’s work, the author writes, “Birth taps into life’s fresh and ever-running waters and is accessible to all people.” Of the latter’s, she delineates “a succession of brief, amazing movements, each pregnant with some tenacious, natal seed.” Banks identifies Truth and Morrison as Black, which stands in contrast to the less common use of racial descriptors for her other (all White) subjects.
This ambitious thesis will appeal to readers of thematically linked historical biographies.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781324006398
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
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by Kamala Harris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 23, 2025
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
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New York Times Bestseller
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
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by Kamala Harris ; illustrated by Mechal Renee Roe
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by Stephanie Johnson & Brandon Stanton illustrated by Henry Sene Yee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 12, 2022
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
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New York Times Bestseller
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
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by Brandon Stanton photographed by Brandon Stanton
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