A fast-paced, welcome celebration of groups that have been “at risk of erasure from the canon of pop music history.”
Loud, long-overdue applause for some of pop music’s most talented singers.
In this collaboration, Flam, a New York City–based writer and interior designer, and Liebowitz, author of the poetry collection National Park, unfold an extensive oral history of the many dynamic girl groups from roughly 1950 to 1970. These groups, usually comprised of young Black women, represent a powerful era of popular music that often goes unrecognized. Many readers may recognize such individuals as Darlene Love or Shirley Alston Reeves or recall groups singing backup for Sam Cooke, but the importance of these women to modern music has been downplayed. Groups like the Chantels, the Blossoms, the Shirelles, the Vandelles, and more performed an array of memorable songs. The authors state their purpose of applauding these young women who were often seen as “fleeting investments by a music industry that gave them remarkably shortened careers.” Many of them experienced extreme abusive control from management as well as racism while touring. This oral history, based on more than 100 interviews, offers a well-selected, lively collection of interviews, and the authors allow the primary players to tell their own stories. Readers will form a fellowship with each of these young women as they rehash their compelling careers. Famous songwriters and performers such as Cher, Carole King, and Whoopi Goldberg chime in to either build on a particular story or to explain the relevance of a specific musician or group. Goldberg sums it up well: “I think that particular time with The Supremes, The Marvelettes, and Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, that was a really moving and shifting time in the country as well as in neighborhoods and realizing that there was no door that could keep you out if you were willing to knock the door open.”
A fast-paced, welcome celebration of groups that have been “at risk of erasure from the canon of pop music history.”Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780306829772
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Hachette
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2023
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
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
SEEN & HEARD
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