A unique family memoir that doubles as social history.
The son of 1960s radicals confronts the tangled family legacy of social justice activism and political violence.
Born in 1977, Zayd Ayers Dohrn is the son of Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, members of the Weather Underground, the revolutionary group that opposed the Vietnam War and fought for racial justice in America; their tactics involved the after-hours bombing of government buildings and led to the deaths of three Weathermen in an accidental explosion at a Greenwich Village townhouse that had served as a bomb-making studio. Bernardine became only the fourth woman in history on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, although federal charges against her were eventually dropped. “She was, and is, the most committed, fiercely determined person I’ve ever known,” Dohrn writes, yet she and his father were enigmas to him. For several years, the family, with his younger brother, Malik, lived off the grid, eluding law enforcement with disguises, assumed names, and jobs that paid in cash. “When I was just three years old, I learned to recognize plainclothes police officers and undercover agents in a crowd, to make our calls from payphones and speak in code, to walk a trajectory—the complicated mix of turns and switchbacks we used in a city to lose a tail,” Dohrn writes. This fugitive childhood was founded on what Dohrn calls the origin story: “After they had kids, they told us, they…stopped bombing buildings and breaking people out of jail. They started making plans to surface—to focus on being parents first.” The truth was a bit more complicated, as he discovered while interviewing them for the Mother Country Radicals podcast that led to this book. “Bill and Bernardine were still desperate to be part of something larger than themselves,” he writes, “even if it meant risking the safety of our family.”
A unique family memoir that doubles as social history.Pub Date: May 19, 2026
ISBN: 9781324089315
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
PERSPECTIVES
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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