An entertaining, enlightening self-portrait from a proud man with an immense heart and soul.
A memoir focuses on a trailblazing, Texas-bred physician and cattleman.
In this impassioned autobiography, veteran pediatrician Terry King chronicles his adventurous life, starting with his humble beginnings in 1938, when he was born needing resuscitation via an emergency ice bath. From that point, he writes, his journey was charged with the electricity of a good, honest life and the satisfaction of hard work. A tour of his extended family tree includes his parents, who met in high school yet hailed from disparate backgrounds. The anecdotes flow freely and plentifully as the author regales readers with heartfelt and often humorous tales of childhood foibles, such as his affinity for matches and fire, much to the dismay of his younger brother, Richard. Conversely, wartime food rationing placed a strain on the region, particularly when his father was drafted into the Army, leaving his mother to raise two rambunctious boys on a busy cattle ranch. Looking back, King remains grateful for the environment that nourished his body and spirit: “The great outdoors, the sense of accomplishment for a hard day’s work, the joy of watching the birth of a calf, the stars at night, the birds nearby—they all influence your thoughts and who you become.” An avid sportsman, he remained driven and focused throughout his school years and well past the beginnings of a marriage that would endure for decades and fatherhood. After being fascinated by a movie featuring a heart-lung machine, the author embarked on a medical odyssey to become a pediatric cardiologist and was inspired and influenced by several notable doctors along the way. King’s engaging stories continue through his time in the Air Force and at a busy New Orleans hospital, where he served as a devoted pediatrician eagerly pioneering new and revolutionary lifesaving cardiac procedures, many garnering him great industry accolades. But eventually, the memories of his bucolic childhood would tug at his heart, and the King family soon relocated to Northeastern Louisiana and started a cattle ranch that expanded in acreage as time progressed.
There is a palpable passion to King’s prose and an immutable sense of pride permeating every page of his memoir. Complementing the nuanced prose, the book offers the personal photographs of family, friends, and medical colleagues who have enriched the author’s journey. He admits to the urge to pen this work after the death of his parents and of having an “uneasy feeling that something’s left to be done.” His ultimate purpose in writing the book was to “thank and honor the many who have impacted my life.” Buoyed by his Christian faith and credence in cowboy wisdom, both of which are fondly and consistently referenced throughout the memoir, King possesses a venturesome spirit and a fierce dedication to his homeland that come across beautifully. “Growing up country is one of my most treasured blessings,” he writes. Never boring or overbearingly sentimental, the author’s writing strikes a keen balance between the resonant musings of an accomplished medical provider and the reflections of a Southern cattleman. Fans of stories about cowboys and native Texans will discover much to enjoy and admire in King’s chronology—written with his wife, Nancy King—of a life lived to its fullest.
An entertaining, enlightening self-portrait from a proud man with an immense heart and soul.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 242
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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