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SWINDLER

A.E. DAWSON AND THE CANADIAN PROBLEM

A rigorously researched account that’s filled with keen insights about a financier and swindler.

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A woman investigates her grandfather’s descent from successful businessman to white-collar criminal in this biography.

Dawson grew up thinking of her grandfather Alfred Ernest as a “slightly romantic figure, perhaps a Robin Hood sort of guy,” an audacious man who embraced adventure and landed in some kind of legal trouble. After his death, she came into possession of a trunk brimming with his personal papers, and the author set out to determine the truth her own father had refused to disclose. Ernest left his native England for Canada in 1905 with little more than a “restless, risk-taking spirit” in order to escape poverty, the hole left by an absentee father, and the neglect of a “wicked stepmother.” He found astonishing success as an insurance salesman and eventually became “one of Canada’s most prominent corporate leaders and financiers.” But he was wiped out by the stock market crash of 1929. He inexplicably turned to selling mining stock, peddling ownership in “worthless shell companies—fictitious companies that he had recently invented out of whole cloth.” Dawson sifts through the evidence with admirable diligence—it comes as no surprise that she is a journalist. She reconstructs not only the facts of the matter—Ernest was arrested in 1942 and spent years in prison while his relatives “told their friends and neighbours” that he was in the army—but also the complex psychology of a formerly upright citizen who ruined the lives of ordinary people for financial gain. The author offers no facile closure on this score but rather a series of impressions: Ernest was an ambitious man who loved to gamble and had a deep romantic streak that expressed itself in his literary aspirations. It does not at all seem a contradiction that Dawson concludes that Ernest died a “broken old man” who also “lived a full life, with generous measures of love, despair, art, and adventure.” This is a mesmerizing biography, full of drama and subtlety, and an intriguing slice of Canadian history.

A rigorously researched account that’s filled with keen insights about a financier and swindler.

Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-03-911839-3

Page Count: 234

Publisher: FriesenPress

Review Posted Online: April 30, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022

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  • New York Times Bestseller

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TANQUERAY

A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.

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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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  • New York Times Bestseller

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LOVE, PAMELA

A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.

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The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.

According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.

A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.

Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023

ISBN: 9780063226562

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023

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