For die-hard fans only.
The director offers his side of the story.
The besieged Allen tells all—repeatedly and angrily—about his side of the relationship with his former lover’s adopted daughter. Part of the book is an ambling reminiscence, much of which we’ve heard before (vide the opening of Annie Hall), about family life in World War II–era Brooklyn. “Delusional as she was,” writes the author of his elderly mother, “at the end she never lost her ability to kvetch, which she had raised to an art form.” Another part comprises Allen’s reflections on filmmaking, which students of the form may find interesting. When the author isn’t airing complaints about money (“I was probably the lowest paid filmmaker of my generation”), he turns in a few craft notes on his belief in moving fast and inexpensively, with a fixed rule: “no editing till the shooting ends.” Those craft notes, too, end in complaint. His last film went unseen in the U.S. (“fortunately, the rest of the world remains sane”), and the one he’d like to make is proving difficult due to cancel culture. In the third part of the book, Allen repudiates the charge, among others, of child molestation. Unwilling to acknowledge that Mia Farrow may have had cause for anger because of his relationship with college-aged Soon-Yi Previn, Allen protests that he “was able to liberate Soon-Yi from a terrible situation and provide her with an opportunity to flower and realize her potential.” Page after page, the author declares his innocence in the face of a legal and cultural machine arrayed against him. The three aspects of the book blend uneasily throughout, and anyone hoping for intriguing biographical details must wade through ceaseless fuming (“Falsely accused, hideous press, enormous legal expense”) to get to them, leaving us to wonder what happened to the sharp-witted, funny author of Getting Even and Without Feathers.
For die-hard fans only.Pub Date: March 23, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-951627-34-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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