A deferential, unsentimental portrait that ably captures Stephansson’s life and legacy.
Hreinsson (The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, 1997, etc.) translates and abridges his award-winning two-volume biography of Icelandic émigré poet Stephan G. Stephansson.
Born in 1853, Stephansson is introduced as a freethinking poet, pioneer, farmer and naturalist whose strong leftist politics grew following his immigration to America, in 1873, and later to Canada, where he spent over half of his life. After an enigmatic foreward by John Ralston Saul about Canada’s cultural legacy, in addition to remarks from the poet’s grandson, who supported and financed publication, the author includes a brief history of Iceland—a welcome beginning for those unfamiliar with the fjords, volcanic eruptions, ancient forests and dispersed, pious, agrarian people of the Nordic island during 19th and early 20th centuries. Hreinsson, writing “from an Icelandic point of view,” convincingly shows how his and Stephansson’s home country—with its rich mythology, respect for nature and pastoral literary tradition—shaped “Stephan G.’s” poetry. Still, the Icelandic universe can be difficult to navigate: Young Stephan had an aunt named Helga, who had a daughter, Sigridur, and another first cousin named Helga Sigridur, whom Stephan later marries. The core source material is Stephansson’s verse and correspondence to and from the poet, which Hreinsson translates and incorporates into the text to varying effect. Biographical notation and excerpts illuminate the braiding of Stephansson’s agricultural and literary work, while providing a feeling of coevolving with the poet. In addition to the language barrier, the biography is littered with indefinites—“probably,” “might,” “likely,” “seems” and “we can imagine”—and the author sometimes obfuscates his sources. Yet the man who emerges from this portrait is complicated and real. Hreinsson’s Stephansson is proud, questioning and sagacious—an Icelandic heir to Emerson, Whitman or Thoreau. Perhaps the book’s most noticeable misstep, though, is its inconsistent description of the poet’s apostasy, his conviction that women should have equal rights, and his self-identification as “a Non-Partisan, a Socialist, a Bolshevik.”
A deferential, unsentimental portrait that ably captures Stephansson’s life and legacy.Pub Date: March 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0973365726
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Benson Ranch Inc.
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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