A frank love story set amid the ideals of the 1960s.
Lester describes a radical marriage and its aftermath in this personal memoir.
The author met Julius Lester in the summer of 1962 at a summer camp in the Catskills, where they were both working as counselors. The Connecticut-raised, activism-minded Joan had been taking a break from college to work for a bit. Julie, as Lester liked to be known, was fresh out of college in Nashville and had headed to New York City to become a writer. Joan was white, Julie Black. Despite their inflexible personalities, they bonded over their mutual love of literature and their intense attraction to one another. “Maybe we really were the intellectual soul mates we believed we were, and some sixth sense let me know it,” reflects Lester. “Was I as forbidden to him, my access to a white world equally beguiling? He gravitated to me as much as I to him, as if we were two magnets being pulled toward each other.” They wed later that year, at a time when interracial marriage was rare and, in some states, illegal. The marriage lasted eight years before ending in divorce—eight years filled with activism, frustration, and clashing ambitions set against the tumultuous backdrop of America in the 1960s. The author writes with candor about the complex dynamics of their relationship, which shifted over time, due in part to Julie’s growing fame as a writer: “Julie, I only realized later, was essentially a conservative man whose artistic bent drew him, for a time, into bohemian environments that felt like home to me,” writes Lester. “The historical moment of the early ’60s made it appear that we shared progressive values, but as the decade wore on, it became clear we did not.” The book continues past the divorce, detailing the author’s subsequent relationships, her embrace of her bisexuality, and the long process of figuring out how to live for herself. With its novelistic detail and earnest but imperfect characters, this memoir reveals more than most about what makes activists tick.
A frank love story set amid the ideals of the 1960s.Pub Date: May 25, 2021
ISBN: 9780299331009
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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