A fresh, well-researched debut.
Inside the book world.
Literary historian McGrath brings sociological methodology to an examination of a particular literary subculture: agents, the intermediary between an author and publisher. Drawing on archival sources, input from more than 75 agents (including several of the most influential in the field, trade, and industry publications, biographies, and memoirs, McGrath offers insights into the strategies, values, and relationships that shape an agent’s work. How, she asks, does an agent sell books by an unknown writer? Find promising clients among the many who want to get published? Weigh her taste against commercial viability? Advocate for writers of color, in a system that values whiteness? Most important, how does the agent shape who, what, when, and how a work gets published? McGrath focuses on several facets of the publishing business, including the marketing of a debut novel, the significance of short story publication, the challenges faced by agents of color, and the selling of books internationally. Her investigations uncovered some surprises: Although an author’s track record is significant in publishers’ decisions to buy future work, she found that the debut novel has become a dominant force in the literary marketplace, making “youth and inexperience” assets rather than liabilities. Short story publication “functions as an audition” for a writer, helping agents to identify potential novelists. In publishing writers of color, the insularity of publishing’s social networks—the field of agents is 80 percent women and largely white—tends to prop up “existing power structures,” favoring plots showing Black people or immigrants assimilated into or neutralized by white culture; similarly, in selling foreign rights, the tastes and preferences of the “literary center” dictate what gets presented to global markets. The agent, McGrath argues persuasively, serves as an “unacknowledged legislator of the literary field.”
A fresh, well-researched debut.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9780691256160
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
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
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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