A piercing work of investigative journalism on a celebrity scandal that continues to fester.
A thorough exposé on the alleged misconduct of R&B superstar R. Kelly.
Former Chicago Sun-Times pop music critic DeRogatis (The Velvet Underground: An Illustrated History of a Walk on the Wild Side, 2009, etc.) chronicles his two-decade-long surveillance and reportage of Kelly, 52, in a fiery, shocking analysis. Drawing from a wealth of personal interviews, research material, Kelly’s 2012 memoir, Soulacoaster, and harrowingly detailed episodes from female accusers, the author frames his assessment of Kelly with an account of the afternoon he received an anonymous fax charging the singer with having a “problem” with “young girls.” This accusation stoked his curiosity about Kelly and his unique music, which combined “lascivious bedroom jams with soulful prayers or pleas.” DeRogatis profiles Kelly from his birth in Chicago, through his unsettled childhood on the South Side, where he fell in love with basketball and music yet was plagued by a learning disability and sexual abuse. Despite numerous dead ends, the author persistently chased leads, uncovered startling evidence, and eventually presented a lawsuit-laden report on Kelly’s sexual misdeeds, which was largely ignored by the entertainment media as well as law enforcement and even accusers too afraid to come forward. DeRogatis remained undeterred and continued collecting damning information, including forwarding two anonymously delivered videotapes to police depicting Kelly having sex with supposedly underage girls. The bulk of the book showcases this scandalous material alongside meticulously described allegations and personal attestations from many women accusing the star of sexual abuse, coercion, and the intricate operation of a sex cult. The author’s relentless pursuit of Kelly has only proved fruitful in recent years, as the incriminations against Kelly have killed his music career and landed him in and out of jails and courthouses fighting a dizzying number of sexual misconduct charges. As much as the book is a juicy celebrity tell-all, it more importantly spotlights the women Kelly victimized and their separate journeys toward exposing their truths.
A piercing work of investigative journalism on a celebrity scandal that continues to fester.Pub Date: June 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4007-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2019
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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