An offbeat, sometimes trenchant personal narrative about the value of joy.
The former radio-show host offers a book about finding cheer in everyday life.
“Dread is communicable,” writes Keillor at the beginning of his latest book. “Crap is bad for the brain.” This observation is part of the opening salvo from the creator of the syndicated Minnesota Public Radio show A Prairie Home Companionand the author of many books. Keillor’s book is designed to recall the central and often overlooked value of good cheer in American life, which he characterizes as being in relatively short supply in the modern era. The idea to write a book about cheerfulness, he says, matured in his mind while he was recovering from successful heart surgery in 2022; the concept felt strange to him, like a non-skier writing about skiing: “I went through decades of busy striving and confusion and dissatisfaction,” he remembers, “and now I felt secure in my skis, looking down the steep chute, knees bent, leaning forward, pushing off.” The book’s narrative wanders through Keillor’s memories, pulling in a large cast of aunts, uncles, grandparents, old friends, and colleagues, as well as his parents, portrayed with the warm glow of settled love. It also includes helpings of Keillor’s famously deadpan doggerel poetry. His general observations are intertwined with frequent reflections (he reminds readers often that he’s 80). These memory-glimpses are drawn from his childhood and personal life, as well as his professional career; the latter came to an end with MPR in 2017, following allegations of inappropriate behavior with a female colleague. Keillor denied any wrongdoing, and in the book, he briefly characterizes the separation as the result of “a simple shakedown scheme by a man and woman who’d worked for the show for years.” (A 2018 MPR News feature later reported “a years-long pattern of behavior that left several women who worked for Keillor feeling mistreated, sexualized or belittled.”)
Readers who are nostalgic for A Prairie Home Companionmay be surprised by the valedictory tone of Keillor’s prose throughout this book. Every page feels like a farewell address, every observation is slightly pained, and every personal recollection reads like the last affectionate look-around of a man about to fall off a cliff. The Minnesota humor that permeates so much of Keillor’s earlier prose here feels not only dry, but also mordant. “Of course there’s loneliness and guilt, a sense of meaninglessness—you wonder: why am I here? What did I come in the kitchen looking for? Why am I holding a spatula?” goes one typical passage, at the end of which Keillor offers a plucky but grim punchline: “But the moment passes, thanks to memory loss.” The book has bits of the familiar hangdog humor for which the author was once famous (“It’s cold in Minnesota so I went into radio because it’s indoors and vacuum tubes gave off heat”), but they’re matched with tougher assertions (on quitting drinking: “The way to do it is to do it”) and comments on his acceptance of age: “The beauty of getting old is that I am no longer trying to find myself,” he writes. “I am here, this is me, forlorn mug and all.”
An offbeat, sometimes trenchant personal narrative about the value of joy.Pub Date: May 13, 2023
ISBN: 9798988281801
Page Count: 268
Publisher: Prairie Home Productions
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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