A detailed explication of a vital artistic and cultural concept.
An exploration of the meanings, purposes, and limits of improvisation in life, art, and politics.
Fertel is a writer, public intellectual, and philanthropist who heads the New Orleans–based Fertel Foundation, which supports projects involving art, education, and food culture, and the Ruth U. Fertel Foundation, which supports education in Louisiana. In these pages, heoffers a tour de force exploration of improvisation and its many uses, beginning with what most people would associate with “improv”: a distinctive form of theater perfected by Chicago’s Second City troupe. But the author then demonstrates how the concept of improvisation touches many other areas of life and society and has immense creative and destructive potential—and he goes on to show why the latter is especially salient in today’s political climate. Indeed, for Fertel, one of the most significant applications of improvisation is in the political arena, where it has the most potential and is the most perilous. While explaining the dark places that former President Donald Trump takes improvisation, Fertel suggests that “his improvising gave him the authority to break norms (and laws).” The author begins his book with the concepts of “cold cognition” (which neuroscientists call the “rational mind”) and “hot cognition” (a term for the “intuitive mind”), and he gradually brings out why both aspects are essential. He also invokes the Greek mythological origins of these ideas, as well as the cross-cultural archetype of the Trickster, and applies these notions to a variety of disciplines, including vaccine development, jazz and hip-hop, and the visual arts. Overall, this is a challenging work that requires readers to absorb complex concepts right at the beginning, and lay readers may find some of its explorations to be easier to grasp than others. Ultimately, though, this is a thoughtful and accessible look at how and why improvisation goes far beyond the stage, and why its power should not be underestimated.
A detailed explication of a vital artistic and cultural concept.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780882141589
Page Count: 246
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A familiar format, but a timely reminder that cities are made up of individuals, each with their own stories.
Portraits in a post-pandemic world.
After the Covid-19 lockdowns left New York City’s streets empty, many claimed that the city was “gone forever.” It was those words that inspired Stanton, whose previous collections include Humans of New York (2013), Humans of New York: Stories (2015), and Humans (2020), to return to the well once more for a new love letter to the city’s humanity and diversity. Beautifully laid out in hardcover with crisp, bright images, each portrait of a New Yorker is accompanied by sparse but potent quotes from Stanton’s interviews with his subjects. Early in the book, the author sequences three portraits—a couple laughing, then looking serious, then the woman with tears in her eyes—as they recount the arc of their relationship, transforming each emotional beat of their story into an affecting visual narrative. In another, an unhoused man sits on the street, his husky eating out of his hand. The caption: “I’m a late bloomer.” Though the pandemic isn’t mentioned often, Stanton focuses much of the book on optimistic stories of the post-pandemic era. Among the most notable profiles is Myles Smutney, founder of the Free Store Project, whose story of reclaiming boarded‑up buildings during the lockdowns speaks to the city’s resilience. In reusing the same formula from his previous books, the author confirms his thesis: New York isn’t going anywhere. As he writes in his lyrical prologue, “Just as one might dive among coral reefs to marvel at nature, one can come to New York City to marvel at humanity.” The book’s optimism paints New York as a city where diverse lives converge in moments of beauty, joy, and collective hope.
A familiar format, but a timely reminder that cities are made up of individuals, each with their own stories.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781250277589
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.
Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past.
McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781668098998
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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