by Richard Warren Brewster ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 28, 2021
A captivating and movingly elegiac memoir.
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Brewster chronicles the histories of 17th-century books that came into his family’s possession in the 1800s, and, through them, the troubled past of his clan.
In 1951, when the author was 10 years old and his brother, Sam, was 12, the pair found some old tomes in the attic of their home in Glen Cove, New York. The books were very old, and it was soon revealed that they dated all the way back to the mid-1600s. They were originally purchased by William Stoughton, who’s best known as the judge who presided over the infamous Salem witch trials, and who signed the death warrants of those who were unjustly convicted. One of the volumes bore what the author calls “creepy flyleaf notations,” handwritten by Stoughton, that mentioned “evil spirits.” The young author thought that this referred to a curse that haunted his own troubled family; later, he realized that Stoughton had pulled the phrase from a satirical poem about indefatigable bill collectors. The Brewster family originally obtained the books in 1801, and Brewster uses them in the memoir as a way to enter into a discussion of his family’s affluent but often unquiet past—one marked by war, depression, suicide, and even murder. The author recalls painful moments in his own personal history, as well, including a sexual assault he experienced as a boy almost 70 years ago, which he relates with the urgency of someone who’s determined to bear witness: “Harm and rage that will not go away, no matter how many decades pass, need to be voiced and heard.”
Brewster presents a memoir that’s intriguingly unconventional in style and structure. Although the narrative is built around the nearly 400-year-old tomes, it quickly transcends them and ultimately relates not only the author’s family history, but also a reflection on human nature: “My purpose in writing this little book has been not to document, much less glorify, any splinter or fragment of society. I mean only to tell a few stories, some comical, some sad or tragic, but in every case stories of universal human experience.” His family members’ lives are almost cinematically dramatic; in one memorable episode, for instance, the author flew to Turkey when he learned that his older brother, Tom, had been arrested for attempting to overthrow the government—a charge largely based on Tom’s possession of a Kurdish-Turkish dictionary. The curse of the evil spirits, as the young author understood it, made a profound impression upon him, and he saw it, in part, as an expression of inevitable torment that comes with wealth and an unceasing devotion to business. Overall, it’s an affecting work, and a thoughtful and engrossing meditation on attempting to come to grips with family difficulties that, as presented here, seem to have an air of inexorability. Brewster’s writing is elegantly polished, but also casually anecdotal, and the remembrance as a whole is so concise that readers are likely to be left wanting to read more of his recollections.
A captivating and movingly elegiac memoir.Pub Date: Sept. 28, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-9913520-6-7
Page Count: 198
Publisher: Protean Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 10, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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Best Books Of 2017
New York Times Bestseller
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National Book Award Finalist
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
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by Stephanie Johnson & Brandon Stanton illustrated by Henry Sene Yee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 12, 2022
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
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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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