A sprawling, charming look at Disney, amusement parks, and mid-20th-century Americana.
Bruce offers a detailed history of the development of Disneyland’s influential Enchanted Tiki Room attraction.
In his jovial introduction, writer/director Brad Bird says that the author’s investigation into Disney’s Tiki Room is “about all the blood, sweat, tears, innovation and will that go into spell-weaving.” For Bruce, the Tiki Room, which debuted its singing mechanical birds and on-trend Polynesian design to the public in 1963, represented midcentury America’s “ultimate expression of all things exotic.” The author has gone to great lengths to back that claim up, delving deep into the history of Walt Disney himself and the myriad influences that converged for the creation of the Tiki Room to explore Disney’s idiosyncrasies, the creation of Disneyland itself, and the cultural and technological explosions of the time. Bruce begins with a much younger Disney as he first discovers mechanical toys in Europe, leading to an obsession with miniatures and dioramas that set the foundation for what would become Disneyland. The fascinating story of the struggling post-war Disney studios, desperate for a hit, plays out in the background as Disney animation fuels Walt’s vision of opening his park. The author consistently expands his point of view, zooming out from Disney to explore the style and atmosphere of the 1960s in general. The text includes a stunning amount of detail; Bruce writes with the confidence of an expert. In his exuberance, however, it does sometimes feel that he leaves his main subject behind, getting lost in specific details about Walt Disney the man, but he eventually ties his various threads together into one engrossing narrative of the Tiki Room’s artistic evolution and opening. The author covers a lot of ground and does so with consistent good-natured humor: “One hundred and sixty acres of orange groves in Anaheim, California, never knew what hit them,” he writes about the opening of Disneyland; readers discovering these stories for the first time will likely feel the same.
A sprawling, charming look at Disney, amusement parks, and mid-20th-century Americana.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9798218241063
Page Count: 396
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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