An unflinching and upsetting snapshot of an elderly sex offender’s life.
A convicted sex offender recounts a life torn apart by the consequences of a decision that destroyed multiple lives.
In 2010, the author of this wrenching, often graphic memoir pled guilty to aggravated sexual assault of a minor in Texas and the attempted sexual assault of a minor in Colorado, which resulted in a sentence of five years in prison and 10 years’ probation, including mandatory treatment. “I accept complete responsibility for my contemptible crime,” he now writes in this book, in which he says that his “hope is that the world can see me as I am now—instead of the way I was.” He relates a story of an abusive childhood, and his unsettling teenage feeling of being “different” from other boys in his California high school (“No popular jock wanted to be called ‘queer’”). After his service in Vietnam and his later loving marriage to a woman, he realized that “[he] was too straight to be gay and too gay to be straight.” This, he writes, led him to pursue covert sexual activity in the anonymous culture of adult bookstores and gay bathhouses. In the mid-2000s, however, his secrecy extended to his sexual abuse of a 12-year-old foster child under his and his wife’s care. After the child told officials of the author’s actions, Bradford was honest with his attorneys about the crime, but not with his spouse or adult children. This is all revealed in what the author portrays as a Kafkaesque odyssey through the correctional system, emphasizing its unrelenting punishment in prison and on probation; at one point, he notes that during his probation, he once ended a call to a Veterans Administration suicide-hotline counselor because he had to call his probation officer on time: “Suicide can wait—but abiding by probation’s rules could not.” Readers may find that such moments raise disturbing questions, such as whether rehabilitation and reentry into society is possible for child sexual-abuse offenders. These are certainly issues worth addressing, although many readers won’t sympathize with this account’s exploration of them.
An unflinching and upsetting snapshot of an elderly sex offender’s life.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Dec. 30, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
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
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