An insightful history of Palm Beach County’s Black community from the perspective of a lifelong resident.
A debut author blends memoir and social commentary in this nonfiction book.
A lifelong resident of Palm Beach County, Florida, Ryles experienced discrimination firsthand growing up in the segregated city. Telling his story with autobiographical vignettes that jump across multiple timelines, the author emphasizes both the pervasiveness of racism and the resilience and determination of the city’s Black residents. He notes, for instance, that when the integrated Atlanta Braves Major League Baseball team trained in South Florida, the Black players were not allowed to stay in segregated hotels. This situation prompted Palm Beach’s Black community, including Ryles’ parents, to offer lodgings to all-stars like Dusty Baker, who wrote the book’s foreword. The author discusses the influence of his grandparents’ neighbor, Edward Rodgers, who served a pivotal role in advocating for civil rights reforms before becoming the county’s first Black judge. The author would follow in Rodgers’ footsteps as a lawyer whose legal work overlapped with his activism. (Ryles would serve on the West Palm Beach City Commission and as president of the city’s Housing Authority.) The author combines his fascinating and deeply personal history of the Black experience in Palm Beach with a broader commentary on how slavery and the legacy of Jim Crow continue to reverberate into the present. “Jim Crow never fully went away,” he writes, adding that he believes that the era of segregation and legalized discrimination has “metastasized into more heinous and covert methods of racial subjugation.” He connects his son’s 2019 interaction with police—who arrived on the scene of a car accident with guns drawn rather than focusing on rendering aid to the stranded motorist—to other episodes of police hostility toward young, Black males, such as the 2016 killing of Philando Castile. The book’s narrative is often interrupted by “Did You Know” segments that include trivia about Black history, where Ryles shares his insights on topics that span from the Trump administration’s anti-diversity campaigns to the white savior trope often found in movies about slavery.
An insightful history of Palm Beach County’s Black community from the perspective of a lifelong resident.Pub Date: March 23, 2026
ISBN: 9781956474763
Page Count: 170
Publisher: Heliotrope Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
