The tale of Freeman Bernstein, a Broadway grifter who scammed Nazi officials on the eve of World War II.
Roll Call columnist Shapiro (One-Car Caravan: On the Road with the 2004 Democrats Before America Tunes In, 2003), Bernstein’s great-nephew, first heard of his relative’s coup as a bit of family lore. Research proved it to be the capstone of a long career of dirty deals, including bankruptcies, jail time in at least two countries, and many unpaid bills. Born in upstate New York in 1873, Bernstein was the son of Polish Jews who came to the U.S. five years earlier. His first scrape with the law came at age 13, when he was nabbed for lifting $10 from a swimmer’s unguarded pants. Freed on a technicality, he took the lesson that there’s always a way to beat the law. A long string of scams and scuffles followed. He gravitated to the horseplayers and sharpers of the Saratoga racing season and took to booking acts in local burlesque theaters. He soon developed a reputation for stiffing the performers, and he became a well-known Broadway character, with frequent appearances in the pages of Variety. A bright spot was his marriage to May Ward, a minor vaudeville star whose taste for the finer things of life matched Bernstein’s. Shapiro chronicles Bernstein’s career in depth, thanks in part to his frequent mentions in Variety. But after a while, Bernstein’s exploits lose appeal; few of the ways to stiff the innocent inspire admiration. Shapiro deploys a wise-guy style reminiscent of the showbiz columnists of Bernstein’s heyday, but this also wears thin. Reader interest is kept alive awaiting Bernstein’s crowning coup: bilking the Nazis by delivering scrap metal instead of the valuable nickel they paid for. Occasional glimpses of better-known showbiz figures provide color—Bernstein crossed paths with Mae West, Will Rogers, Sophie Tucker, and other real stars of the era—but nothing can really make Bernstein himself likable.
An intermittently interesting look at a character who was undoubtedly raw material for Ring Lardner and Damon Runyon.Pub Date: June 14, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-16147-6
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORICAL & MILITARY | WORLD | HISTORY
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Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.
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More life reflections from the bestselling author on themes of societal captivity and the catharsis of personal freedom.
In her third book, Doyle (Love Warrior, 2016, etc.) begins with a life-changing event. “Four years ago,” she writes, “married to the father of my three children, I fell in love with a woman.” That woman, Abby Wambach, would become her wife. Emblematically arranged into three sections—“Caged,” “Keys,” “Freedom”—the narrative offers, among other elements, vignettes about the soulful author’s girlhood, when she was bulimic and felt like a zoo animal, a “caged girl made for wide-open skies.” She followed the path that seemed right and appropriate based on her Catholic upbringing and adolescent conditioning. After a downward spiral into “drinking, drugging, and purging,” Doyle found sobriety and the authentic self she’d been suppressing. Still, there was trouble: Straining an already troubled marriage was her husband’s infidelity, which eventually led to life-altering choices and the discovery of a love she’d never experienced before. Throughout the book, Doyle remains open and candid, whether she’s admitting to rigging a high school homecoming court election or denouncing the doting perfectionism of “cream cheese parenting,” which is about “giving your children the best of everything.” The author’s fears and concerns are often mirrored by real-world issues: gender roles and bias, white privilege, racism, and religion-fueled homophobia and hypocrisy. Some stories merely skim the surface of larger issues, but Doyle revisits them in later sections and digs deeper, using friends and familial references to personify their impact on her life, both past and present. Shorter pieces, some only a page in length, manage to effectively translate an emotional gut punch, as when Doyle’s therapist called her blooming extramarital lesbian love a “dangerous distraction.” Ultimately, the narrative is an in-depth look at a courageous woman eager to share the wealth of her experiences by embracing vulnerability and reclaiming her inner strength and resiliency.
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0125-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | SELF-HELP
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PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
An engrossing memoir as well as a lively treatise on what extraordinary grace under extraordinary pressure looks like.
16
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The former first lady opens up about her early life, her journey to the White House, and the eight history-making years that followed.
It’s not surprising that Obama grew up a rambunctious kid with a stubborn streak and an “I’ll show you” attitude. After all, it takes a special kind of moxie to survive being the first African-American FLOTUS—and not only survive, but thrive. For eight years, we witnessed the adversity the first family had to face, and now we get to read what it was really like growing up in a working-class family on Chicago’s South Side and ending up at the world’s most famous address. As the author amply shows, her can-do attitude was daunted at times by racism, leaving her wondering if she was good enough. Nevertheless, she persisted, graduating from Chicago’s first magnet high school, Princeton, and Harvard Law School, and pursuing careers in law and the nonprofit world. With her characteristic candor and dry wit, she recounts the story of her fateful meeting with her future husband. Once they were officially a couple, her feelings for him turned into a “toppling blast of lust, gratitude, fulfillment, wonder.” But for someone with a “natural resistance to chaos,” being the wife of an ambitious politician was no small feat, and becoming a mother along the way added another layer of complexity. Throw a presidential campaign into the mix, and even the most assured woman could begin to crack under the pressure. Later, adjusting to life in the White House was a formidable challenge for the self-described “control freak”—not to mention the difficulty of sparing their daughters the ugly side of politics and preserving their privacy as much as possible. Through it all, Obama remained determined to serve with grace and help others through initiatives like the White House garden and her campaign to fight childhood obesity. And even though she deems herself “not a political person,” she shares frank thoughts about the 2016 election.
An engrossing memoir as well as a lively treatise on what extraordinary grace under extraordinary pressure looks like.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6313-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2018
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
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