A compelling case that Churchill passed the baton across the ocean.
An overseas role model.
John F. Kennedy remains an attractive figure, as Nelson shows in his fine biography. He was the second (and initially neglected) son of a wealthy and pugnacious businessman who initially supported Franklin D. Roosevelt. Appointed ambassador to Britain in 1938, Joseph Kennedy was recalled in disgrace after two years of insisting that the U.S. should stay out of a war that Britain would certainly lose. Largely ignored, John was a mediocre student at Harvard but finished with a bang as he grew fascinated with international affairs and wrote a senior thesis on British appeasement, published as Why England Slept, that became a bestseller. After his older brother Joseph’s death in 1944, JFK became the focus of his father’s ambition, so family money and influence played a major role in his election to the House in 1946, the Senate in 1952, and the presidency in 1960. Fascinated by Winston Churchill, JFK read and reread everything written by the British statesman; Nelson argues this vastly improved his oratory, persuaded him to reject his father’s isolationism, and exerted a powerful influence on his policies as president. Churchill earned immortality by warning against dealing with a tyrant from a position of weakness and then, as prime minister, fending off Hitler until his opponents got their act together. By the late 1940s, the tyrant was Stalin, and Kennedy, never much interested in domestic affairs, focused on anticommunism. Like his hero, he emphasized negotiation and summits but also worked to strengthen the military. Churchill was “the greatest man he ever met,” Kennedy once said; Churchill also admired the American president. The former prime minister’s granddaughter recalled watching TV with him one night in 1963: “Tears poured down Grandpapa’s cheeks as news came in that the young President had died….He left the table and spent a long time sitting before the fire, staring into it.”
A compelling case that Churchill passed the baton across the ocean.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781541705432
Page Count: 352
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2026
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A football star’s bracing account of his battle for racial equality—and how powerful forces arrayed against him.
A principled athlete strives for social justice.
Kaepernick forthrightly details the activism that earned him global renown but cost him his NFL career. In 2016, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback “was filled with disgust” after police shootings of fellow Black men in several American cities. Before a preseason game, he made a spontaneous decision: “It hit me in that moment that I should find a seat” during the national anthem. He did the same at two more games before reporters noticed. Kaepernick will forever be associated with “taking a knee” during the anthem, but he credits Eric Reid—a teammate who agreed with Kaepernick’s message—for suggesting that they kneel together during subsequent anthems. The protest changed everything for Kaepernick. President Trump vilified him. Kaepernick and his wife received death threats. And though he’d taken the 49ers to a Super Bowl, no teams would sign him. He will likely make news for his take on Jay-Z, whose lucrative partnership with the NFL was criticized as an attempt to launder the league’s reputation. Visiting Africa, where Kaepernick learns about “African leaders who willingly sold their own people to the enslavers,” he “couldn’t help but to think about Jay-Z and the NFL.” In opening chapters, Kaepernick recalls suffering traumatic racial abuse as a child. Being in “white spaces”—he was adopted by white parents—placed him “under a microscope every minute of every day.” He isn’t always nuanced, depicting some people he disagrees with as cartoonishly clueless. But his writing about how college and pro teams “lied” to him about injuries underlines his “feeling of being a disposable commodity.” A decade has passed since Kaepernick played in the NFL, but he stays fit in case “a team needing a QB” calls.
A football star’s bracing account of his battle for racial equality—and how powerful forces arrayed against him.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781538777879
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Legacy Lit/Hachette
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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PERSPECTIVES
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