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WE'RE BETTER THAN THIS

MY FIGHT FOR THE FUTURE OF OUR DEMOCRACY

A thoughtful and inspiring exhortation to do better by a much-missed leader.

Excellent political memoir by the late Democratic representative from Baltimore, one of the sitting president’s most vocal opponents.

The descendant of sharecroppers from the South who moved north in the Great Migration, Cummings (1951-2019) was the first of his family to go to college, from which he graduated Phi Beta Kappa, went on to attend law school, and served 12 terms in Congress. This book is not a self-congratulatory recitation of accomplishments, however. The author often returns to a telling episode: Donald Trump promised Cummings that he would work on a long-standing pet project—to lower prescription drug prices—and then did absolutely nothing about it. “One of the lessons of the street is that your first encounter with a person can tell you all you need to know. If a guy is straight with you, he’ll be okay. If he isn’t, watch out,” writes Cummings, who adds that Trump told the media that Cummings had told him, “You will go down as one of the great presidents in the history of our country.” It was, notes the author, “a flagrant, shameless, bald-faced lie….One of thousands, it turns out.” Trump’s constant mendacity led directly to his impeachment, a process in which Cummings played a key role and was unfazed when Trump responded, as ever, with a lawsuit: “Sorry, but when it comes to intimidation with the hope of us backing off—he had the wrong guy, on the wrong issue.” Cummings provides a pages-long list of Trump’s manifold high crimes and misdemeanors, which resulted in, naturally, a bitter torrent of tweets attacking Cummings and his district, yielding a concise retort, among which was the line, “I know the constitution, Mr. President, even if you don’t.” The author closes with an account of his final moments by his wife, Maya, and a selection of abbreviated eulogies from leaders including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

A thoughtful and inspiring exhortation to do better by a much-missed leader.

Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-06-299226-0

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: July 27, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020

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  • New York Times Bestseller

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TANQUERAY

A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.

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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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MARK TWAIN

Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.

A decidedly warts-and-all portrait of the man many consider to be America’s greatest writer.

It makes sense that distinguished biographer Chernow (Washington: A Life and Alexander Hamilton) has followed up his life of Ulysses S. Grant with one of Mark Twain: Twain, after all, pulled Grant out of near bankruptcy by publishing the ex-president’s Civil War memoir under extremely favorable royalty terms. The act reflected Twain’s inborn generosity and his near pathological fear of poverty, the prime mover for the constant activity that characterized the author’s life. As Chernow writes, Twain was “a protean figure who played the role of printer, pilot, miner, journalist, novelist, platform artist, toastmaster, publisher, art patron, pundit, polemicist, inventor, crusader, investor, and maverick.” He was also slippery: Twain left his beloved Mississippi River for the Nevada gold fields as a deserter from the Confederate militia, moved farther west to California to avoid being jailed for feuding, took up his pseudonym to stay a step ahead of anyone looking for Samuel Clemens, especially creditors. Twain’s flaws were many in his own day. Problematic in our own time is a casual racism that faded as he grew older (charting that “evolution in matters of racial tolerance” is one of the great strengths of Chernow’s book). Harder to explain away is Twain’s well-known but discomfiting attraction to adolescent and even preadolescent girls, recruiting “angel-fish” to keep him company and angrily declaring when asked, “It isn’t the public’s affair.” While Twain emerges from Chernow’s pages as the masterful—if sometimes wrathful and vengeful—writer that he is now widely recognized to be, he had other complexities, among them a certain gullibility as a businessman that kept that much-feared poverty often close to his door, as well as an overarchingly gloomy view of the human condition that seemed incongruous with his reputation, then and now, as a humanist.

Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.

Pub Date: May 13, 2025

ISBN: 9780525561729

Page Count: 1200

Publisher: Penguin Press

Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025

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