Sports fans will find a smooth and pleasant ride on this trip back in time.
A heavily credentialed and well-traveled sportswriter spins yarns about the old ballgames.
Golf. Tennis. Boxing. Baseball. Basketball. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Larry Bird. Bill Walton. Arthur Ashe. Jackie Robinson. Roberto Clemente. Pete Rose and the rest of the Big Red Machine. Newspaperman and magazine profiler Callahan rounds the bases as he chronicles his close encounters with many of the most prominent athletes of the last half-century. Fans of the author will recognize the meandering yet readable storytelling style and some of the same characters from The Bases Were Loaded (And So Was I). A young Callahan commiserated with an elder Red Smith; at their best, these pieces recall that legend of the press box’s outside-the-lines approach, if not exactly his unassuming mien on the page. Certainly, this part-memoir, part-profile compilation reflects a time before social media, when athletes needed sportswriters. The underside of close, personal access is that writers who ingratiate themselves with sources sometimes cut deals about what makes it into print, which could raise questions about motive and veracity. The narrative spell is also periodically broken when Callahan includes long, sometimes-tinny quotes from athletes. Still, just as the best sportswriters put a topcoat on memory, allowing us to appreciate the plays and players more than when we first saw them, the author’s skill at showing public figures in private moments is evident, and he spares readers the usual arguments about who was the greatest to lace up a pair of sneakers. Particularly intriguing are Callahan’s portraits of Bill Walsh and Tiger Woods. In 2018, writes the author, “the new Tiger was a better guy. Standing on the practice green or striding down the fairway, he actually chatted with golf’s brigade of good young players who, almost to a man, had been drawn to the game by him.”
Sports fans will find a smooth and pleasant ride on this trip back in time.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-324-00427-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
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
A substantive, dishy, entertaining glimpse into Hollywood royalty.
The Oscar-winning actor and producer opens up about filmmaking, sex, drugs, and escaping his father’s shadow.
Despite its casual, just-shooting-the-breeze title, Douglas’ memoir is detailed and precision-engineered to entertain; as a filmmaker who won his first Oscar as a producer (for 1975’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), he knows a successful story needs clarity and conflict to work. The son of screen legend Kirk Douglas, he was well-acquainted with celebrity at an early age; witnessing his parents’ divorce, he spent much of his youth acting out. (He paid for college by selling weed by the suitcase-load.) After years of stalls and failures, he broke through on TV with the ’70s cop show The Streets of San Francisco. But small-screen work (along with his nepo-baby status) made breaking into big-screen roles harder until 1984’s Romancing the Stone made him a star and 1987’s Wall Street earned him a second Oscar. Douglas is candid about his industry struggles—like endless budget fights and betraying his father, who was promised the lead in Cuckoo’s Nest—and his reputation as a lothario. (Though married, he had an on-set affair with Kathleen Turner during Stone.) He’s also open about his alcohol and cocaine abuse, leading to a rehab stint, echoed in his son Cameron’s own struggles with addiction and recovery. He’s comfortable discussing controversies—the LGBTQ+ community’s protests of 1992’s Basic Instinct, his proto-MAGA character in 1993’s Falling Down—and plainly keeps an enemies list. But this story arc leaves him triumphant, with a loving wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones), his family, his health (after a cancer scare), and a late-career Emmy for playing Liberace in Behind the Candelabra (2013).
A substantive, dishy, entertaining glimpse into Hollywood royalty.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9781538782224
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
