A nuanced, visually appealing celebration of a pillar of American journalism.
Writers and scholars reflect on the history of a journalistic institution.
Founded in 1975, the National Association of Black Journalists presented a direct challenge to an American news media ecosystem that was “overwhelmingly a White, male juggernaut” concentrated in a handful of elite newspapers and television networks. In this celebration of NABJ’s 50-year anniversary, editor Dawkins, a professor of journalism at Hampton University Scripps Howard School of Journalism and Communications in Virginia, gathers eminent scholars and journalists to reflect on the body’s history. The book’s first half features 10 essays from various authors providing diverse perspectives on the organization’s past. While the collection is generally celebratory, the opening essay, written by Dawkins, surveys both the highs and lows of the organization, from its massive growth in the 1980s through navigating the Jayson Blair plagiarism and fabrication scandal of the early 2000s. Other essays follow a similarly nuanced approach, such as Gayle Terry’s piece on the internal conflicts within the organization when it considered expanding its membership to public relations professionals, disc jockeys, and advertising agents. A particularly powerful essay by Cheryl Devall surveys the legacy of Black photojournalists, who had long fought for respect and parity among their peers in print journalism and became a major source of fundraising support within the NABJ through auctioning their work. The volume’s second half, described by Dawkins as “a book within a book,” is an “Almanac” of the NABJ’s history in the 21st century, walking readers through a timeline of NABJ activities from the Sept. 11 attacks and War on Terror through the Black Lives Matter movement and the presidential elections of Donald Trump. Visually stunning, the volume features high-resolution, full-color photographs throughout. True to the journalistic roots of its editor and contributors—who include Washington Post journalist Hamil Harris; former editor-in-chief for Essence.com, Ingrid Sturgis; and the former American Press Institute’s Director of Inclusion and Audience Engagement, Letrell Crittenden—the anthology features an impressive array of footnotes and scholarly references.
A nuanced, visually appealing celebration of a pillar of American journalism.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2025
ISBN: 9780979168673
Page Count: 250
Publisher: National Association of Black Journalists
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.
Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past.
McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781668098998
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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