A pleasure for fans of the hard-charging legend.
Sir Charles Barkley, one of the great knights-errant of the court (basketball, that is), receives a full-scale biography.
Born in 1963, Barkley once complained to a reporter that he’d been misquoted in his own autobiography—and then, elsewhere, reportedly confessed that he hadn’t yet read it. Washington Post writer and editor Bella does a good job of assembling the provable facts about the man known as “The Round Mound of Rebounds.” Whether on or off the court, he has always been a larger-than-life presence. “At the height of his career, he was treated more like a rock star than a basketball player,” writes the author, who adds that Barkley has hosted Saturday Night Live more times than any other athlete. Early on, Bella asks a pointed, relevant question: “Is he the greatest player to never win a ring?” Bella lays out the affirmative case well, starting out with an anecdote that finds Barkley, in young childhood, flinging himself off a building in the belief that he could fly. He couldn’t, of course, but he could do just about everything else physical, including taking a leading role on the 1992 Olympic dream team, “considered by many as the most dominant assembly of basketball talent ever,” and passing a vertical test in college by jumping straight up onto a 42-inch wooden box, leading Clyde Drexler to remark, “He’s the best fat guy around.” After playing at Auburn, the always mouthy, always entertaining Barkley played in the NBA for Philadelphia, racking up the NBA’s highest rebound numbers, and then for Phoenix, where he was voted MVP in 1993. Still, despite outplaying nearly all of his peers, he was never able to win an NBA championship. Bella also covers Barkley’s career as a respected sports commentator—when reminded that he is now part of the media he used to complain about, he notes, “Yeah…but at least I’m gonna be honest.”
A pleasure for fans of the hard-charging legend.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-335-48497-0
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
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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