A well-crafted key to understanding a central player in world politics.
Longtime journalist House draws on 40 years of travels to Saudi Arabia to present a portrait of a nation transforming, for good and ill.
“Today’s Saudi Arabia is literally unrecognizable from that of 2016,” writes House, adding, “No country has undergone such dramatic change in so short a time.” This is largely due to Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, the crown prince and true power behind the throne of his father, the aged King Salman. Though callow in youth—House recounts his buying a Lamborghini while still in high school and immediately wrecking it—MBS, as he’s shorthanded throughout, emerged as a serious man intent on reforms that will lead, among other things, to Saudi Arabia’s joining the world’s top 10 economies. One way to do that is to diversify the economy beyond oil, and this is happening. More profound changes have come in social matters: MBS has steeply curtailed the powers of the feared religious police, relaxed countless restrictions on women, and, born in 1985, sidelined much of the former gerontocracy. These changes have in turn come with a cost, as House writes, for MBS has jailed thousands of Saudis, some for corruption but many for political reasons. House, who has long had access to MBS, is generally admiring but far from uncritical: She notes that one of the victims of the new government’s repression was the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, brutally murdered by Saudi agents in Istanbul, possibly at MBS’s behest, direct or not. Somewhat to his credit, House adds that “while denying any prior knowledge, he has acknowledged his responsibility.” Regardless, MBS enjoys great popularity at home and general respect from abroad, even as “he already sees himself as an historic figure, a leader not only transforming Saudi Arabia but impacting the world with his big dreams and bold intentions.”
A well-crafted key to understanding a central player in world politics.Pub Date: July 8, 2025
ISBN: 9780063390355
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
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
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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