A brisk, well-researched life.
The dazzling achievements of a trailblazing politician.
Page, Washington bureau chief for USA Today, draws on a prodigious number of interviews with figures including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Newt Gingrich, Ilhan Omar, and John Boehner; Nancy Pelosi’s colleagues, friends, co-workers, and adversaries; and interviews with Pelosi herself to create a balanced, informative biography of a woman widely hailed as “a master of the inside game of politics.” Born in Baltimore in 1940, Nancy D’Alesandro grew up steeped in public service. Her father was a Maryland Congressman and later Baltimore’s mayor; her savvy, ambitious, pragmatic mother “organized the grass roots.” Politics, Page notes, was “the family business.” A year after graduating from Trinity College in 1962, she married Paul Pelosi, and in 1969, the couple and their growing family moved to San Francisco for Paul’s work. While raising five children, Pelosi became involved in local politics, prompting San Francisco’s mayor to tap her for the city’s library commission. At the age of 35, Pelosi “discovered that she liked having an official position, being able to convene hearings, to cast votes. She began to think about her possible political role in a different way.” In 1987, she won her first election. Early in her career, in Armani suits and stiletto heels, Pelosi was “routinely underestimated” by the male-dominated political world. But she quickly, and repeatedly, demonstrated her power: She was supremely organized, adept at fundraising, and laser-focused on success. A major force in passing the Affordable Care Act, Pelosi, Obama told Page, is “tougher than anybody in the world.” As one reporter put it, she wielded “an iron fist in a Gucci glove.” Page elaborates on Pelosi’s impressive public career rather than on her personal life. “I’m as private a person as there is, a shy one,” Pelosi told Page, when she deemed a question intrusive. Private, to be sure; shy, not believable.
A brisk, well-researched life.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5387-5069-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Twelve
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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