Penn has a pleasing ability to be serious and funny at the same time. A story well worth hearing.
How the ambitious, idealistic son of Indian immigrants became a force for change as both a beloved comic actor and an accidental public servant.
Though some news stories about Penn's memoir tout it as a coming-out story, that topic is barely mentioned in this personal history. Bullied for his ethnic background from kindergarten onward, the author points to seeing the Mira Nair film Mississippi Masala at 15 as a life-changing experience, primarily because "brown people" are on screen doing something besides "eating monkey brains," and secondarily because "having sex with someone like Denzel Washington might be a real possibility someday!" Nevertheless, he writes, "discovering my sexuality was still a ways off,” and he doesn’t mention it further until the charming account of finding his current partner during the period he worked in the Obama White House for the Office of Public Engagement. What he does discuss in depth is the outrageous casual racism that plagued every phase of his career, from the agent who wouldn’t meet him in his college days at UCLA, because "you might play a cabdriver once or twice, but it wouldn’t be worth his time and effort to represent someone who isn’t going to work regularly,” all the way through NBC's rough handling of Penn's dream project, Sunnyside, in 2019. After being forced to do an Indian accent during a one-line appearance on Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Penn almost lost the part of a character named “Taj Mahal Badalandabad” in Van Wilder to a White actor in brownface. The one place that the author found diversity and equity was the Obama campaign. His involvement there, and then in the White House, is recounted with characteristic humility and good humor. No mention is made of the Trump years or the pandemic, which seems just as well.
Penn has a pleasing ability to be serious and funny at the same time. A story well worth hearing.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982171-38-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
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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