Ably captures the swagger, attitudes, and angling derring-do of a golden age of fishing history.
A fascinating look at the narrow but wild world of tarpon fishing.
Forbes and Garden & Gun contributing editor Burke indulges in his boundless enthusiasm for fishing, showing how storytelling is an important part of the fishing experience. “In angling, as in life,” writes the author, “it is the ones that get away that haunt our dreams, that push us over the brink into a lustful madness. And Homosassa [Florida] was the first place in these anglers’ lives where, hot damn, those dreams just might come true.” In Sowbelly (2005), Burke chronicled the search for a record largemouth bass. Here, he focuses on the less-known arena of tarpon fishing, discussing its most prominent practitioners as well as the extraordinary fish itself, a behemoth that can weigh more than 250 pounds and live to be 80. The book is also about a specific time and place—late-1970s to early-1980s Homosassa—and the colorful fishing culture that thrived within it. Burke brings readers to this infamous hot spot, where the biggest names in fly-fishing—including baseball star Ted Williams and a cadre of other tough characters—would converge to try and out-angle each other. But it wasn’t only about the purity of fishing. “The egos involved made the atmosphere electric,” writes the author. “The difficulty of the quest made it legitimate. And the drugs and the women that were swept in with the tide made it all veer out of control.” By the mid-1990s, the Homosassa tarpon craze began to peter out. Climate-unfriendly governance in Florida led to an ecological crisis that helped drive the tarpon from Florida’s coastal waters. Burke constructs the rise and fall of this unique fishing tale with impressive narrative control and an obvious reverence for its vivid characters.
Ably captures the swagger, attitudes, and angling derring-do of a golden age of fishing history.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64313-558-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: July 7, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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