Not without flaws but a courageous and heartfelt military memoir from the perspective of a soldier’s family.
A widow seeks answers regarding the death of her Green Beret husband in Niger in 2017.
When Black met her husband, Bryan, in 2002, she had no idea that the man who looked “like a tough guy with a bad attitude” would become the “love of my life.” Though both were in relationships already, their friendship quickly turned romantic. They married in 2005, and by 2008, they had two young sons. To support his family, Bryan enlisted in the military and trained for the Green Berets, a grueling process that “takes more than desire; it requires full mental and physical commitment.” He then earned Ranger credentials and deployed to Niger in 2016 and again in 2017. In early October that year, the author learned the devastating news that her husband had been killed in an ambush. Though she believed the military would conduct “an extensive investigation” and share details of their findings with the families of the victims, her attitude changed dramatically after Bryan’s funeral. In the difficult months that followed, stories emerged in the media from “anonymous officials” that Bryan’s team captain, Mike Perozeni, had “mischaracterized the mission to avoid getting proper approvals.” Black believed otherwise, not only because she had spoken to Perozeni, but because of the frustratingly incomplete information she received from the military investigation. After interviewing the survivors of the mission, the author discovered that commanding officers above Perozeni had not only ignored his assessments of the mission, but had forced Bryan’s team “into a dangerous situation with woefully inadequate support.” Although the narrative pace suffers at times from too much detail and some meandering, Black’s story is important for what it reveals about corruption at the highest levels of the military and how that corruption can result in the needless sacrifice of soldiers’ lives.
Not without flaws but a courageous and heartfelt military memoir from the perspective of a soldier’s family.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-19093-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
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
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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