A significant report on the impact of sexual crime in adult entertainment.
An exposé on the popular pornography site, awash in a myriad of sexual abuse and child trafficking allegations.
Mickelwait, a leading anti–sex trafficking activist and founder of the Justice Defense Fund, explores the rise in exploitative abuse by the adult entertainment industry. Her impassioned report focuses on her discovery that the 10th-most-visited website in the world, Pornhub, was monetizing homemade, pay-to-download, advertisement-supported sexually abusive content—and manipulatively cloaking that material even after its “dirty secret” was exposed to the media. The author delivers the bulk of her chronologically structured investigation via dramatically lucid language and verbatim commentary from content moderators, survivors, and former employees of MindGeek, the company that owned Pornhub until 2023. Throughout the book, Mickelwait provides damning evidence of Pornhub’s incentivization of sexual crime. “I realize Pornhub’s servers are potentially the largest collection of child pornography and sexual crime in North America, if not the world,” she writes. The author chronicles how she wrote an accusatory series of social media posts and media articles urging the executives of MindGeek, specifically CEO Feras Antoon, to be held accountable, which sparked vicious retaliation efforts. “They have no choice but to attack with lies, and assaults on character and credibility to slow the truth about them from spreading,” she writes. “One thing is clear: MindGeek plays dirty, and this is going to be a messy fight.” As Mickelwait delved further into the darker realms of the internet, more shady characters emerged, and she provides disturbingly vivid portraits of the wrongdoers. Thankfully, her initiative has made significant progress in court, but she is clear that the fight against sexual crime will continue. The author is a dedicated journalist, and she effectively sounds the alarm for tighter controls over “crime scene” porn sites.
A significant report on the impact of sexual crime in adult entertainment.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9780593542019
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Thesis/Penguin
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
A dauntless, moving account of a kidnapping and the horrors that followed.
Enduring the unthinkable.
This memoir—the first by an Israeli taken captive by Hamas on October 7, 2023—chronicles the 491 days the author was held in Gaza. Confined to tunnels beneath war-ravaged streets, Sharabi was beaten, humiliated, and underfed. When he was finally released in February, he learned that Hamas had murdered his wife and two daughters. In the face of scarcely imaginable loss, Sharabi has crafted a potent record of his will to survive. The author’s ordeal began when Hamas fighters dragged him from his home, in a kibbutz near Gaza. Alongside others, he was held for months at a time in filthy subterranean spaces. He catalogs sensory assaults with novelistic specificity. Iron shackles grip his ankles. Broken toilets produce an “unbearable stink,” and “tiny white worms” swarm his toothbrush. He gets one meal a day, his “belly caving inward.” Desperate for more food, he stages a fainting episode, using a shaving razor to “slice a deep gash into my eyebrow.” Captors share their sweets while celebrating an Iranian missile attack on Israel. He and other hostages sneak fleeting pleasures, finding and downing an orange soda before a guard can seize it. Several times, Sharabi—51 when he was kidnapped—gives bracing pep talks to younger compatriots. The captives learn to control what they can, trading family stories and “lift[ing] water bottles like dumbbells.” Remarkably, there’s some levity. He and fellow hostages nickname one Hamas guard “the Triangle” because he’s shaped like a SpongeBob SquarePants character. The book’s closing scenes, in which Sharabi tries to console other hostages’ families while learning the worst about his own, are heartbreaking. His captors “are still human beings,” writes Sharabi, bravely modeling the forbearance that our leaders often lack.
A dauntless, moving account of a kidnapping and the horrors that followed.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780063489790
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Harper Influence/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
A powerful reiteration of principles—and some fresh ideas—from the longest-serving independent in congressional history.
Another chapter in a long fight against inequality.
Building on his Fighting Oligarchy tour, which this year drew 280,000 people to rallies in red and blue states, Sanders amplifies his enduring campaign for economic fairness. The Vermont senator offers well-timed advice for combating corruption and issues a robust plea for national soul-searching. His argument rests on alarming data on the widening wealth gap’s impact on democracy. Bolstered by a 2010 Supreme Court decision that removed campaign finance limits, “100 billionaire families spent $2.6 billion” on 2024 elections. Sanders focuses on the Trump administration and congressional Republicans, describing their enactment of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” with its $1 trillion in tax breaks for the richest Americans and big social safety net cuts, as the “largest transfer of wealth” in living memory. But as is his custom, he spreads the blame, dinging Democrats for courting wealthy donors while ignoring the “needs and suffering” of the working class. “Trump filled the political vacuum that the Democrats created,” he writes, a resonant diagnosis. Urging readers not to surrender to despair, Sanders offers numerous legislative proposals. These would empower labor unions, cut the workweek to 32 hours, regulate campaign spending, reduce gerrymandering, and automatically register 18-year-olds to vote. Grassroots supporters can help by running for local office, volunteering with a campaign, and asking educators how to help support public schools. Meanwhile, Sanders asks us “to question the fundamental moral values that underlie” a system that enables “the top 1 percent” to “own more wealth than the bottom 93 percent.” Though his prose sometimes reads like a transcribed speech with built-in applause lines, Sanders’ ideas are specific, clear, and commonsensical. And because it echoes previous statements, his call for collective introspection lands as genuine.
A powerful reiteration of principles—and some fresh ideas—from the longest-serving independent in congressional history.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9798217089161
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
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