A different sort of family story, and a valuable one.
Klessig’s memoir, which recounts a life spent battling mental illness, incorporates commentary from his son.
Lowell Klessig was raised on a dairy farm in rural Wisconsin. He was a bright but awkward kid, curious about things and hardworking. As he entered the wider world attending the University of Wisconsin at Madison, he began to suffer from seasonal affective disorder and mood swings that were finally diagnosed as bipolar disorder. At the same time, Klessig was changing his views radically. He was raised to revere Joe McCarthy as a heroic scourge of communists and to see the Vietnam War as a noble endeavor; now, he began to question the war and involve himself with the Civil Rights movement and, eventually, climate change activism—a radical turnaround. Klessig forged a respectable career in academia. When in his manic phase, he produced brilliant work; in the depressed phase, he was a wreck, hiding in bed, almost unable to take basic care of himself (these passages are truly painful to read). His first marriage ended in divorce. He attempted suicide and finally found salvation in the form of lithium carbonate, “a wonder drug that actually worked wonders” and kept him on an even but precarious keel for the rest of his life. The text consists of long autobiographical passages by Klessig interspersed with commentary by his son Lukas. Readers eventually learn that Lukas has a milder form of his father’s maladies (he was diagnosed at 13 with OCD). Lukas is a shrewd observer of his father (who died in 2014 of a rare neurodegenerative disease), recognizing that Klessig did have his flaws and was not always easy to live with. Still, this is clearly a labor of love. And it is grimly uplifting, considering the enormous challenges that Klessig did overcome. The man left boxes and boxes of writings, and this volume’s aftermatter contains sketches, poems, and family photos.
A different sort of family story, and a valuable one.Pub Date: April 25, 2023
ISBN: 9780960118908
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Medley Park Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Suffering unfathomable anguish, a mother memorializes her murdered son with great tenderness.
Remembering “Hershy.”
Three hundred and twenty-eight days. That’s how long Hersh Goldberg-Polin was held in captivity—tortured and starved by his captors in underground tunnels—before he was executed. He was 23 years old. In this unvarnished and heartrending account, Goldberg-Polin’s mother, Rachel, writes of the unending torment that she and her husband, Jon, endured after learning that their son had been kidnapped by Hamas terrorists during the attacks of October 7, 2023. Like so many other young people on that day, Hersh was attending a music festival in Israel—a celebration of love and unity. As Goldberg-Polin writes, her son was “the only American citizen kidnapped alive on October 7th who did not return alive.” In direct, plainspoken language that steers clear of politics, the author, a Jewish educator, recounts “being in a daze of the most indescribably sickening horror and fear, like nothing I had ever felt in my life. I remember my heart racing and feeling like I was in a permanent state of someone scaring me.” In addition to “shovel[ing] out my pain in the form of words,” she shares reminiscences of her son, as well as details that only a parent could notice. “His eyes were cookies,” she says of her “Hershy.” “I couldn’t find the pupils within the dark chocolate-brown irises.…He had a raspy voice, even when he was a baby.” And: “I thought he was hilarious; his sarcasm and humor were similar to mine.” Hersh and his sisters, Leebie and Orly, adapted well to life in Israel after the family moved from Richmond, Virginia. (Hersh was born in the Bay Area.) After being discharged from his service in the Israeli army as a combat medic, he was planning to journey around the world—a longtime dream of his. “So many people have come to love you, Hersh,” Jon Polin writes in the book’s afterword. And with one simple word that has the power to touch any heart, he signs off: “Dada.”
Suffering unfathomable anguish, a mother memorializes her murdered son with great tenderness.Pub Date: April 21, 2026
ISBN: 9798217198009
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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