A smart and funny look at pop music from a writer who’s crazy in love with the genre.
A journalist takes a new look at the pop stars of the early 2000s.
Journalist and podcaster Princiotti isn’t ashamed of her pop-music obsession, and thinks you shouldn’t be, either. She traces her love of the genre back to 2003, when she was 9, and “Hilary Duff was the single most important person in the world to me outside my immediate family.” The subject of Princiotti’s book is the female pop stars of the early 21st century, who, she says, “expanded our understanding of what a pop star could be and forced the industry around them to take them seriously.” First among equals in this cohort is Britney Spears, who introduced young fans to “independence, agency, and self-expression” and who was the subject of misogynistic sneers from the media and “girl-on-girl crime and slut-shaming” by some of her peers. Princiotti considers the rise and fall of other pop singers, including Avril Lavigne, who claimed to have “created punk for this day and age,” and Ashlee Simpson, whose career was derailed by a disastrous Saturday Night Live performance. She also writes about the singers who maintained their star power, including Beyoncé, whose “Crazy in Love” launched her solo career, and, of course, Taylor Swift, who along with her fans and the internet “built modern fandom to be massive, persistent, and motivated.” Princiotti’s argument is that these stars never got the respect they deserved for “confronting old assumptions about genre, challenging the perception of celebrity and utilizing new technologies and the burgeoning internet to its fullest,” and she argues it very well, drawing on cultural history and journalism to prove that the singers were sui generis and not just retreads of earlier entertainers. As she convincingly asserts, the musical era was richer and deeper than some give it credit for.
A smart and funny look at pop music from a writer who’s crazy in love with the genre.Pub Date: June 17, 2025
ISBN: 9780593725085
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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
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