A brisk, well-researched life of an enigmatic billionaire.
A revealing portrait of the man “responsible for creating the ideology that has come to define Silicon Valley: that technological progress should be pursued relentlessly—with little, if any, regard for potential costs or dangers to society.”
Chafkin, a features editor at Bloomberg Businessweek, brings long experience in the tech world to his book debut, a savvy biography of billionaire venture capitalist and outspoken neo-reactionary Peter Thiel (b. 1967). Touting a brand of extreme libertarianism, Thiel has created Silicon Valley’s defining ideology of tech above all else. An arrogant, aloof, high-achieving student at Stanford, Thiel came to see the university’s multicultural liberalism “as uniquely despicable, maybe even dangerous.” After graduating from law school, he worked briefly in corporate law and, in the 1990s, arrived in Silicon Valley, intent on making money. Chafkin recounts Thiel’s rise as a business mogul, surrounded by young men who “recognized him as the leader and would not fight with him.” But wealth was only one goal. Thiel also sought to establish himself as a ruthless power broker in Silicon Valley and to wield influence as a conservative thought leader in Washington, D.C. Among his many business projects, Chafkin recounts his involvement in PayPal, which he saw as a way to strip government from control of its own money; Facebook (at one point, Mark Zuckerberg was the “ultimate Thiel acolyte”); Palantir, a surveillance company whose customers include the Army, Navy, and CIA; and his latest interest: funding research that would allow humans to live forever. A major backer of Trump, he served as a “shadow president” on Trump’s transition team, agitating for “maximal disruption within the White House.” Drawing on interviews with Thiel and more than 150 others, many who insisted on anonymity because they feared Thiel’s retribution, Chafkin deftly portrays his subject as a “calculating operator,” “nihilist,” and predator who has constructed an image “so compelling that it has come to obscure the man behind it.”
A brisk, well-researched life of an enigmatic billionaire.Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-984878-53-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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