Even non-Tiger fans might find this amazing comeback story appealing.
The gripping story of the fall and rise of one of golf’s greatest players.
This is GOLF magazine senior writer Bamberger’s second book about a famous golfer whose career was damaged by a sex scandal. The Swinger was a co-authored novel; this is real. As Bamberger tells it, Tiger Woods just didn’t fall; he crashed and burned, emotionally and physically. The author describes him as “an inherently private person who leads a massively public life.” At a time when “interest in him was almost insatiable” and news of a sex scandal broke on Nov. 25, 2009, the “National Enquirer was treating him as if he were Gary Hart seeking the presidency.” Two days later, he crashed his car into a fire hydrant. His wife, Elin, divorced him, taking his two children with her. Woods went into rehab for sex, alcohol, and drug addiction. He lost sponsors and his longtime caddie, Steve Williams. Bamberger offers up two overly long digressions on whether Woods had gotten away with rules infractions in some tournaments and the “messy” topic of whether or not he was taking performance-enhancing drugs. The author suggests readers can jump ahead if the second isn’t of interest. He chronicles, in less detail, Woods’ many injuries and surgeries. In 2016, Woods sat out the entire golf year, and he started to feel better. Then came May 29, 2017, when a Jupiter, Florida, police officer came up to a vehicle in the dark off the side of the road with two flat tires. In the driver’s seat was Woods, clearly impaired, and he was arrested. Woods “had been exposed as never before.” Bamberger is at his best recounting in detail Woods’ redemptive victory at the Masters in 2019. He thoroughly lays out Woods’ faults, but he is still clearly in awe of the “best player in history.”
Even non-Tiger fans might find this amazing comeback story appealing.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-2282-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: March 18, 2020
Disjointed in spots but thoughtful and often inspirational.
An acclaimed actor “taught not to make scenes” as a young girl explores how “scenes” from her life have made her into the woman she became.
In her first book, Wu, best known for her roles in the TV show Fresh Off the Boat and the film Crazy Rich Asians, reflects on the experiences that transformed her from a shy girl into a self-confident performer able to create meaningful, stereotype-defying characters. The American-born daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, Wu, who dreamed of a professional acting career, assimilated well into the conservative White Virginia suburb where she grew up. Yet the Asian actors she saw often made her want to cringe for the way they brought attention to the “Asian-ness” Wu could not entirely accept in herself. It wasn’t until she began studying drama in college that the author began to dig within herself to find what could truly make her characters come alive. In her personal life, Wu deepened her emotional maturity with lessons in love while also experiencing the turmoil caused by a traumatic sexual experience. “I didn’t feel attacked or assaulted or coerced and I certainly didn’t feel raped,” she writes. “Strange as it sounds, the word ‘rape’ didn’t even occur to me.” After moving to California for her acting career, she began to educate herself on rape culture. Her awakening, however, could not protect her from Hollywood anti-feminism or her own desire to be a “cool girl” who could brush off casual misogyny. As she gained professional visibility and acclaim, Wu found herself at the mercy of an Asian American producer who intimidated and sexually harassed her. The essays—parts of which she cleverly imagines as stage scenes—are intimate and rich in emotional detail. However, the time shifts and occasional lack of thematic connection sometimes limit the impact of the author’s message.
Disjointed in spots but thoughtful and often inspirational.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982188-54-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
An essential account of a chaotic administration that, Woodward makes painfully clear, is incapable of governing.
That thing in the air that is deadlier than even your “strenuous flus”? Trump knew—and did nothing about it.
The big news from veteran reporter Woodward’s follow-up to Fear has been widely reported: Trump was fully aware at the beginning of 2020 that a pandemic loomed and chose to downplay it, causing an untold number of deaths and crippling the economy. His excuse that he didn’t want to cause a panic doesn’t fly given that he trades in fear and division. The underlying news, however, is that Trump participated in this book, unlike in the first, convinced by Lindsey Graham that Woodward would give him a fair shake. Seventeen interviews with the sitting president inform this book, as well as extensive digging that yields not so much news as confirmation: Trump has survived his ineptitude because the majority of Congressional Republicans go along with the madness because they “had made a political survival decision” to do so—and surrendered their party to him. The narrative often requires reading between the lines. Graham, though a byword for toadyism, often reins Trump in; Jared Kushner emerges as the real power in the West Wing, “highly competent but often shockingly misguided in his assessments”; Trump admires tyrants, longs for their unbridled power, resents the law and those who enforce it, and is quick to betray even his closest advisers; and, of course, Trump is beholden to Putin. Trump occasionally emerges as modestly self-aware, but throughout the narrative, he is in a rage. Though he participated, he said that he suspected this to be “a lousy book.” It’s not—though readers may wish Woodward had aired some of this information earlier, when more could have been done to stem the pandemic. When promoting Fear, the author was asked for his assessment of Trump. His reply: “Let’s hope to God we don’t have a crisis.” Multiple crises later, Woodward concludes, as many observers have, “Trump is the wrong man for the job.”
An essential account of a chaotic administration that, Woodward makes painfully clear, is incapable of governing.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982131-73-9
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
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