A warmhearted and wholesome look at the personal and practical realities of grief.
A young widower offers a memoir about the loss of his wife.
In the first chapter of this brief remembrance, Brown recalls the moment when he learned that Mara, his wife of nearly 18 years, had died of cardiac arrest: “Think about the person closest to you in your life….Close your eyes and really think about what you might do in that situation.” One night in 2015, at one in the morning in their family home in Austin, Texas, his spouse collapsed in the bathroom of their home and was unresponsive to the EMTs who arrived minutes later, after he called 911. A few hours later, Brown found himself sitting on the stairs of his home, having no idea what to do or think: “The absolute hardest thing we will all deal with in our lives is death,” he reflects, “and yet none of us learns anything about it ahead of time.” In these pages, he draws on his tragic experience to clarify some of the realities that accompany losing a loved one and the process of working through grief; these include dealing with the logistics of estate planning and helping children to process what’s happening (the author’s own children were just 8, 10, 12, and 14 at the time). Brown’s tone throughout this work is warm and approachable. He gently pushes back against such “old school” attitudes as never again speaking about the deceased: “No one says on their deathbed, ‘Move on and don’t ever talk about me again,’” he writes. “I hope my kids talk about me, their goofy dad, the rest of their lives.” However, the most consistent element of the book is its strong optimism; Brown is frank about how brutal his experience was, and the pain that he and his children still experience, but he stresses that good days do return—and grieving readers will be grateful for the reminder.
A warmhearted and wholesome look at the personal and practical realities of grief.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2018
ISBN: 9781984983862
Page Count: 124
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2025
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
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