An evenhanded biography of a pugnacious revolutionary.
The tumultuous life of a tireless activist for women’s rights.
A drama critic and cultural historian, Shteir offers a corrective to negative images of noted feminist Betty Friedan (1921-2006) that accuse her of classism, racism, and homophobia. Drawing on more than 100 interviews, newly available archival sources, and private papers, Shtier provides a more nuanced perspective, portraying her as an idealistic, determined, and complex woman whose explosive temper and anger permeated personal and professional relationships. The eldest daughter in an upper-middle-class family of Reform Jews, she was a sickly, intellectually precocious child prone to rages. At 14, the “short, pudgy bibliophile” began high school, where she became drawn to theater. “Acting,” Shteir writes, “gave her a sense of how she could move audiences as well as craft an identity.” Accepted to many top colleges, she decided on Smith, where she excelled, becoming editor-in-chief of the Smith College Associated News. She was inspired further to pursue journalism after attending the Highlander Folk School, in Tennessee, which offered workshops on writing about labor and union issues. Shteir recounts Friedan’s many love affairs, her work as a reporter for the Federated Press news agency in New York, her estrangement from her family, and her encounters with antisemitism. In 1947, she married Carl Friedan, a theater producer; by 1956, they had three children, and in 1969, they divorced. In 1963, The Feminine Mystique, a book that “universalized female unhappiness,” catapulted Friedan to international fame. Shteir describes Friedan’s role in the founding of the National Organization of Women; her ongoing disputes with other members of the group as well as with noted feminists; and her unwavering support of abortion rights and the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. Her second book, the essay collection It Changed My Life, revealed her as both a visionary and a “paranoid braggart slaying radical enemies.”
An evenhanded biography of a pugnacious revolutionary.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9780300220025
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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