A poignant, tour de force story of survival across multiple generations of a Jewish family.
An award-winning Polish family history gets its first U.S. publication.
First printed in Poland in 2001, Olczak-Ronikier’s saga was hailed as an instant classic, winning the nation’s most prestigious literary prize, the Nike Literary Award. This edition has been beautifully rendered into English by the esteemed Antonia Lloyd-Jones, the former co-chair of the United Kingdom’s Translators Association. The multigenerational history tells the story of the Olczak-Ronikier’s family across three generations. While the branches of the family tree extend into a myriad of directions, offering readers a plethora of biographical vignettes, the main figures in the narrative’s first generation are the author’s great-grandparents, Gustav and Julia Horwitz, who were both born in the 1840s. The Horwitz family, as readers learn, was one of the most important in European Jewry. Descendents of the tribe of Levites, Horwitzes produced “long dynasties of priests and scholars” for centuries. Gustav and Julia’s nine children receive the spotlight in the book’s chapters detailing the second generation, which counts among its members communist revolutionaries, targets of Joseph Stalin’s purges, and acclaimed book publishers. The final generation covered—those born in the early 20th century—includes Holocaust victims, World War II soldiers, and postwar citizens who navigated the Cold War on both sides of the Iron Curtain. While the Holocaust and its lasting impact takes center stage, this is not just a story of victimhood; the work introduces family members such as Ryszard Bychowski, a wartime refugee who declined an opportunity to settle in California and instead joined Britain’s Royal Air Force, dying as a war hero. Also highlighted is Olczak-Ronikier’s mother, Hanna Mortkowicz, a famed Polish poet and novelist in her own right, who rebuilt the family’s publishing house “out of the ashes, like the phoenix” after World War II.
While this is a work of a nonfiction, backed by a scholarly reference section and referencing primary source documents and oral histories throughout every chapter, Olczak-Ronikier’s eloquent history deftly weaves hundreds of stories together into a poignant, cohesive narrative that offers the pleasures of fiction—which is unsurprising, given the author’s background as one of Poland’s most celebrated dramatists and screenwriters. In this chronicle of a prominent Jewish family, Olczak-Ronikier’s extended genealogy is intimately tied to a broader history of Europe from the mid-1800s through World War II, providing a revelatory consideration of the Continent through the lens of Polish Jewry. The book offers the fascinating perspective of assimilated Jews who “dropped religious practices and Yiddish” and were active in Polish independence movements, political debates, urban life, and literary culture yet “were never entirely accepted by the Polish elite and could never be equal.” While the work assumes readers will have a basic knowledge of Polish history, this potential obstacle is mitigated by an introduction by Lloyd-Jones, who provides historical context for a non-Polish audience. The book’s engaging text is accompanied by a treasure trove of family photographs, letters, diary entries, and other historical ephemera peppered throughout each chapter. These visual elements combine with the author’s engrossing storytelling to create an intimate, yet sweeping, saga.
A poignant, tour de force story of survival across multiple generations of a Jewish family.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781953943705
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Rivertowns Books
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
