Firmly in the secondary tier of books about the bizarre, chaotic crew at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
The one-time reality TV contestant and player in an ongoing White House drama bares all—and hints at more.
According to Newman, there’s a recording out there with the N-word spilling out of the mouth of the sitting president. “During production,” she writes, “he was miked, and there is definitely an audio track.” That she or some other former staffer hasn’t brought forth such a thing, she suggests, is just a matter of time, but no matter. Here, the former Apprentice cast member dishes on Donald Trump—and just about everyone else in the White House in the last couple of years. A few are spared: Anthony Scaramucci, for instance, was “cocky and arrogant…but oddly likable,” while Trump referred to Kellyanne Conway’s contrarian husband as “Flip,” for “f*cking little island people,” a reference to his Filipino heritage. As for first daughter Ivanka? “Like her father,” writes the author, “Ivanka was thin-skinned and could not seem to take a joke.” But most of the news, such as it is, in this memoir is about Trump himself, and there’s not much that even the casual observer wouldn’t know: Trump thrives on chaos? Check. He has anger issues? Check. The White House is a mess? Check. The memoir serves as reinforcement, in other words, rather than as fresh meat, and as such, it’s fairly dispensable, especially as the author attempts to explain why she went to the Trump side in the first place: She came from a rough side of town where wealth and power were aspirations and those who had them were role models, and as for his aberrations, well, “he was just overwhelmed, as we all were, by the awesome responsibility of leading the nation.” Once the veil is lifted and she escapes “from the cult of Trumpworld,” things get a little more critical—Racist? Check. Rattled? Check—but no more newsworthy.
Firmly in the secondary tier of books about the bizarre, chaotic crew at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-982109-70-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 4, 2018
At-times inspirational memoir about a journalist’s battle with a grave disease she had to face while also dealing with her...
With the assistance of Chambers (co-author; Yes, Chef, 2012, etc.), broadcaster Roberts (From the Heart: Eight Rules to Live By, 2008) chronicles her struggles with myelodysplastic syndrome, a rare condition that affects blood and bone marrow.
The author is a well-known newscaster, formerly on SportsCenter and now one of the anchors of Good Morning America. In 2007, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, which she successfully fought with surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatment. Five years later, after returning from her news assignment covering the 2012 Academy Awards, she learned that chemotherapy had resulted in her developing MDS, which led to an acute form of leukemia. Without a bone marrow transplant, her projected life expectancy was two years. While Roberts searched for a compatible donor and prepared for the transplant, her aging mother’s health also began to gravely deteriorate. Roberts faced her misfortune with an athlete’s mentality, showing strength against both her disease and the loss of her mother. This is reflected in her narration, which rarely veers toward melodrama or self-pity. Even in the chapters describing the transplantion process and its immediate aftermath, which make for the most intimate parts of the book, Roberts maintains her positivity. However, despite the author’s best efforts to communicate the challenges of her experience and inspire empathy, readers are constantly reminded of her celebrity status and, as a result, are always kept at arm's length. The sections involving Roberts’ family partly counter this problem, since it is in these scenes that she becomes any daughter, any sister, any lover, struggling with a life-threatening disease. “[I]f there’s one thing that spending a year fighting for your life against a rare and insidious…disease will teach you,” she writes, “it’s that time is not to be wasted.”
At-times inspirational memoir about a journalist’s battle with a grave disease she had to face while also dealing with her mother’s passing.Pub Date: April 22, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4555-7845-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlanticsenior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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