A sometimes-upsetting but poignant and informative remembrance.
Hobbs shares her ongoing journey of helping her husband navigate the devastating effects of Alzheimer’s disease.
That author and her spouse, Mike,met in the mid-1960s during their sophomore year at Indianapolis-based Butler University, and in 1970, they married: “I adored Mike, and my new husband promised to love, honor, and entertain me.” It’s a pledge he kept, she says, and they’ve remained together, through thick and thin, ever since. The author writes that she doesn’t know exactly when Mike’s battle with dementia began, but the first sign she recalls was during an evening in 2008. During dinner, Mike told her that he couldn’t remember important information in his new position as the chief operating officer of a startup company that conducted drug trials. Two weeks later, he was fired, and it was a financial and emotional shock. They left California and re-established themselves in Nevada, and in the ensuing years, the couple was able to continue activities they enjoyed, including traveling, skiing, and playing golf—although Mike began to experience occasional verbal and memory lapses. These eventually became more severe, and by 2017, Mike was showing signs of dementia; the next year, he was officially diagnosed with logopenic progressive aphasia, a rare, progressive illness, caused by Alzheimer’s disease, which involves language difficulties. Hobbs is a seasoned memoirist, and her lucid explanations of the various stages of her husband’s condition, accompanied by charts, presents a wealth of facts on his disease and its effects. Some of the statistics that she provides are frightening, and some anecdotes are difficult to read, as she tells of watching and caring for a man who was always the life of the party slip into quietude and confusion. However, what makes this memoir truly riveting is the intensely personal, intimate love story at its heart. She openly recounts her own struggles with a loss of freedom, frustrations, and fears for the future, but she also notes that seven years after his official diagnosis, her husband still shows glimmers of humor, and he still tells her that he loves her.
A sometimes-upsetting but poignant and informative remembrance.Pub Date: April 30, 2025
ISBN: 9798998512827
Page Count: 332
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 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.
