Fittingly solid, if not exciting.
An experienced nonfiction writer ably summarizes the life of the 46th president.
Long political and personal preparation led to Joe Biden’s inauguration as U.S. president in 2021. Currie neatly fits the details of Biden’s public and private lives into the publisher’s format, dividing his information into five chapters covering the Scranton, Pennsylvania, native’s early years; his Delaware political experience and the deaths of his first wife and daughter; his years in the Senate; his years as vice president; and the successful 2020 presidential campaign. An introduction describes the four-day wait for results after Nov. 3, 2020, and offers an overview of Biden’s path to the presidency. The opening chapter stresses his modest origins compared to most of his predecessors. The author gives examples of Biden’s ability to work across political differences and of some actions which, looking back, caused controversy. He mentions the accusations of plagiarism that derailed his first presidential run in 1988 and the long but unsuccessful primary struggle in 2007-8 before he was offered the position of vice president on Barack Obama’s winning team. The final chapter focuses on the winning campaign of 2020. The writing is clear and evenhanded, documented with primary sources including Biden’s own memoir and a range of news sources. Occasional photographs, with family members as well as political opponents, support the generally positive tone.
Fittingly solid, if not exciting. (source notes, timeline, further research, index, picture credits) (Nonfiction. 12-18)Pub Date: June 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-67820-084-8
Page Count: 64
Publisher: ReferencePoint Press
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Important for its frank sex talk but far less inclusive than it aims to be.
An exuberant guide to LGBT life takes the stance that “being L or G or B or T or * is SUPER FUN.”
Speaking with candor, humor, and enthusiasm, Dawson addresses topics from coming out to sexually transmitted infections to sex apps. With irreverent chapter titles like “Stereotypes Are Poo” and a chatty narrative voice, the tone is largely upbeat, though the author also touches on “some MEGA-SAD FACE topics” like discrimination. Easily readable tables and humorous cartoons further liven up the presentation. To add more perspectives, segments from interviewees who represent areas of the LGBT spectrum not represented by the author himself are also included. Chapters on sex and apps like Grindr are helpfully matter-of-fact, and readers hear from people who choose casual sex as well as those who prefer emotionally intimate relationships. The book is a U.K. import, and while U.S.–based readers shouldn’t have much trouble understanding Briticisms like “fancy” or “shag,” some of the anti-discrimination laws referenced won’t apply. More troubling, the book’s efforts to support transgender readers are undermined by persistent, thoughtless affirmations that biology really is destiny—for instance, when the author debunks the myth that “gay men are ‘girls’ ” with a jokey “Penis? Check! Yup, gay men are, in fact, male.”
Important for its frank sex talk but far less inclusive than it aims to be. (glossary, resources) (Nonfiction. 12-18)Pub Date: June 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4926-1782-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
A beautiful meditation on the tender, fraught interior lives of Black boys.
The acclaimed author of Between the World and Me (2015) reflects on the family and community that shaped him in this adaptation of his 2008 adult memoir of the same name.
Growing up in Baltimore in the ’80s, Coates was a dreamer, all “cupcakes and comic books at the core.” He was also heavily influenced by “the New York noise” of mid-to-late-1980s hip-hop. Not surprisingly then, his prose takes on an infectious hip-hop poetic–meets–medieval folklore aesthetic, as in this description of his neighborhood’s crew: “Walbrook Junction ran everything, until they met North and Pulaski, who, craven and honorless, would punk you right in front of your girl.” But it is Coates’ father—a former Black Panther and Afrocentric publisher—who looms largest in his journey to manhood. In a community where their peers were fatherless, Coates and his six siblings viewed their father as flawed but with the “aura of a prophet.” He understood how Black boys could get caught in the “crosshairs of the world” and was determined to save his. Coates revisits his relationships with his father, his swaggering older brother, and his peers. The result will draw in young adult readers while retaining all of the heart of the original.
A beautiful meditation on the tender, fraught interior lives of Black boys. (maps, family tree) (Memoir. 14-18)Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-984894-03-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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