An incisive portrait of what is arguably the world’s preeminent totalitarian regime.
A longtime foreign correspondent digs deep under the surface of Vladimir Putin’s sepulchral Russia.
Bennetts, onetime Moscow reporter for The Times of London, has been in more than a few police stations in Russia. In one of them, early in his narrative, a secret police agent asks him what he thinks of the country’s leader. “It must be very hard to manage such a large country effectively,” he replies, to which the apparatchik gives him a thumbs-up, “as if I was a contestant in a bizarre quiz show who had just provided the correct answer.” Correct answers are hard to come by in the Russian hall of mirrors. On the Ukrainian front, he ponders the attitude of the Russian soldiers, who, far from being indoctrinated zombies, have just one answer: “Da pokhui—“I don’t give a fuck.” It’s a one-size-fits-all response to just about everything in the country, ruled by cynicism, me-firstism, and, more than anything else, apathy: “Most people were utterly convinced that nothing depended upon them, a conviction the Kremlin did its very best to encourage.” The careful reader will not help but notice parallels in other authoritarian-trending countries, where the bosses are held out as the only possible salvation to the world’s problems and where “state media has become adept at seizing on tiny slices of reality and magnifying them to grotesque proportions, until they block out the truth.” Indeed, by Bennetts’ account, the Russian playbook is a closely followed model: Anti-LGBTQ+ repression here, undeclared war there, corruption, far-right radicalism, and violence everywhere, even as Putin, one Kremlin insider observes, is trying to carve out a politics like no other. Putin’s regime will end, as all regimes do. But so fragile is civil society, Bennetts concludes, that he harbors little hope that Russia will ever be able to dig out from the rubble.
An incisive portrait of what is arguably the world’s preeminent totalitarian regime.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781399421690
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Bloomsbury Continuum
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
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
SEEN & HEARD
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