A dissatisfying story full of big egos and few redemptive elements.
A memoir of a career in corporate espionage.
After finishing college, Kerbeck decided he did not want to continue in the family business, to the disappointment of his father. Instead, he chose to move to New York to pursue a career in acting. Struggling to make it, he needed a side gig to pay the bills. A friend mentioned his new “phone job,” and soon, Kerbeck was working out of apartments trying to convince assistants of large corporations to provide him with confidential employee information. Headhunters would then buy this information about the structure of a company in order to poach their employees. In intriguing and unsettling detail, the author shares many of the ploys and angles he and his co-workers developed in order to gain this information, including competitions among the employees. Unfortunately, the narrative loses momentum when Kerbeck begins plotting his career as a B-level actor, sharing details about his auditions, trouble getting acting roles, and brushes with celebrities, including George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, and O.J. Simpson. As the story proceeds, the author alternates discussions of his two careers, noting how he continually vowed to quit the con job if he became a successful actor. However, as Kerbeck became more financially successful at the ruse, he found his ability to follow through difficult. “The world of corporate spying is shady but lucrative,” he writes, “and I am one of the best….As a professional telephone liar—the last of a dying breed—I operate in a shadow market pursuing corporate intelligence worth billions of dollars to the top firms in the cutthroat world of international finance.” Eventually, however, Kerbeck became a victim of the same game. Though family members express concern for his dishonest career choices, he continues to feel little to no remorse for them. Reflecting on his career, he writes, “on my most generous days I tend to think of rusing as a crime without a victim.”
A dissatisfying story full of big egos and few redemptive elements.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-58642-316-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Steerforth
Review Posted Online: Oct. 29, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
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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