This unfettered tell-all will prove nostalgic for those who manage to remember being there and engrossing for readers...
How drugs, sex, and celebrity shenanigans made 254 West 54th St. infamous on the 1980s Manhattan nightclub circuit.
When entrepreneur and author Fleischman was 10, his parents took him to the Copacabana; from that point, he admits that everything “onward propelled me on a trajectory toward Studio 54.” For four years, the author was the “ringleader” of the iconic disco, which quickly became known for its glitzy, star-studded clientele and nightly drug-addled debauchery. As owner and distinguished host, his job became his life and a great part of a heady journey “that nearly killed me.” Fleischman also chronicles his life before Studio 54, which featured significant commercial property acquisitions and a first long-term relationship, all set against a backdrop of sexual revolution and the game-changing Stonewall Riots. The author notes that the process of purchasing the nightclub building came with a sketchy liquor license deal and a sale contingent on heeding the counsel of the former owners, imprisoned for tax evasion, from their jail cells. The club’s reopening in 1981 featured a distinguished guest list, as well as 10,000 eager partiers and voracious young celebrities. With sharply drawn detail from an obvious insider’s vantage point, Fleischman graphically brings to life seasons of provocative parties and notorious “Rubber Room” antics, all of which cemented the club’s racy reputation as the premier destination in Manhattan. The stories of DJs, models, live performances, early Madonna, and scandal flow with the juiciness of a name-dropping gossip column. The hangover, however, proved a harsh reality check since, by the author’s third year of operation, his swift decline into drug addiction and mental instability became a potentially fatal reality: “I’d take Valium to go to sleep, wake up around three in the afternoon, do several lines of coke to get myself going and repeat the routine of yet another day.”
This unfettered tell-all will prove nostalgic for those who manage to remember being there and engrossing for readers wishing they were.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-945572-57-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Vireo/Rare Bird Books
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
If that promise of clarity is what awaits us all, then death doesn’t seem so awful, and that is a great gift from Sacks. A...
Valediction from the late neurologist and writer Sacks (On the Move: A Life, 2015, etc.).
In this set of four short essays, much-forwarded opinion pieces from the New York Times, the author ponders illness, specifically the metastatic cancer that spread from eye to liver and in doing so foreclosed any possibility of treatment. His brief reflections on that unfortunate development give way to, yes, gratitude as he examines the good things that he has experienced over what, in the end, turned out to be a rather long life after all, lasting 82 years. To be sure, Sacks has regrets about leaving the world, not least of them not being around to see “a thousand…breakthroughs in the physical and biological sciences,” as well as the night sky sprinkled with stars and the yellow legal pads on which he worked sprinkled with words. Sacks works a few familiar tropes and elaborates others. Charmingly, he reflects on his habit since childhood of associating each year of his life with the element of corresponding atomic weight on the periodic table; given polonium’s “intense, murderous radioactivity,” then perhaps 84 isn’t all that it’s cut out to be. There are some glaring repetitions here, unfortunate given the intense brevity of this book, such as his twice citing Nathaniel Hawthorne’s call to revel in “intercourse with the world”—no, not that kind. Yet his thoughts overall—while not as soul-stirringly inspirational as the similar reflections of Randy Pausch or as bent on chasing down the story as Christopher Hitchens’ last book—are shaped into an austere beauty, as when Sacks writes of being able in his final moments to “see my life as from a great altitude, as a sort of landscape, and with a deepening sense of the connection of all its parts.”
If that promise of clarity is what awaits us all, then death doesn’t seem so awful, and that is a great gift from Sacks. A fitting, lovely farewell.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-451-49293-7
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
A timely contribution to the discussion of a crucial issue.
A history of the right to vote in America.
Since the nation’s founding, many Americans have been uneasy about democracy. Law and policy expert Waldman (The Second Amendment: A Biography, 2014, etc.), president of New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, offers a compelling—and disheartening—history of voting in America, from provisions of the Constitution to current debates about voting rights and campaign financing. In the Colonies, only white male property holders could vote and did so in public, by voice. With bribery and intimidation rampant, few made the effort. After the Revolution, many states eliminated property requirements so that men over 21 who had served in the militia could vote. But leaving voting rules to the states disturbed some lawmakers, inciting a clash between those who wanted to restrict voting and those “who sought greater democracy.” That clash fueled future debates about allowing freed slaves, immigrants, and, eventually, women to vote. In 1878, one leading intellectual railed against universal suffrage, fearing rule by “an ignorant proletariat and a half-taught plutocracy.” Voting corruption persisted in the 19th century, when adoption of the secret ballot “made it easier to stuff the ballot box” by adding “as many new votes as proved necessary.” Southern states enacted disenfranchising measures, undermining the 15th Amendment. Waldman traces the campaign for women’s suffrage; the Supreme Court’s dismal record on voting issues (including Citizens United); and the contentious fight to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which “became a touchstone of consensus between Democrats and Republicans” and was reauthorized four times before the Supreme Court “eviscerated it in 2013.” Despite increased access to voting, over the years, turnout has fallen precipitously, and “entrenched groups, fearing change, have…tried to reduce the opportunity for political participation and power.” Waldman urges citizens to find a way to celebrate democracy and reinvigorate political engagement for all.
A timely contribution to the discussion of a crucial issue.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1648-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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