Essential for anyone concerned with geopolitics, national security, and the containment of further terrorist actions.
Journalist and national security analyst Bergen delivers a compelling, nuanced portrait of America’s erstwhile public enemy No. 1.
Osama bin Laden, whom the author interviewed long before he became a household name, was an enigmatic and contradictory man: He was rich but insisted on living ascetically—a fact that drove a son of his away in adulthood—and though he had the bearing of a quiet cleric, he engineered the deaths of countless thousands of people, and not just on 9/11. Bergen resists psychobiography while examining some of the facts of his family life that shaped his personality. He barely knew his father, whom his mother had divorced, and he idealized a remote, dusty corner of Yemen, his family seat, even as it gave birth to an offshoot of Islam that worshipped Christian saints alongside Muslim ones. In the last weeks of his life, bin Laden was consumed with the fear that, hidden away in a compound in Pakistan, he was missing out on what he felt should have been a leadership role in the Arab Spring movement—and never mind that it had little to do with his religious fundamentalism. Throughout, Bergen turns up revealing details and sharp arguments against received wisdom: one moment finds bin Laden treating his white beard with Just for Men hair dye; another introduces readers to one of his wives, a “poet and intellectual who…played a key, hidden role in formulating his ideas and helping him prepare his public statements.” Though intelligence presumes him to have delegated the work to lieutenants, Bergen shows bin Laden micromanaging the 9/11 attacks and subsequent operations as the Bush administration bungled its efforts to find him. Meaningfully, the author notes that waterboarding and other torture of captured al-Qaida operatives yielded almost no actionable intelligence, and he disputes the claim that the Pakistani intelligence service shielded bin Laden from American discovery, discounting what has become the near-official narrative.
Essential for anyone concerned with geopolitics, national security, and the containment of further terrorist actions.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982170-52-3
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 18, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
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
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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