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 virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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