A thoroughly well-organized rendition of this classic, snarky work.
Editor Trauring presents a newly annotated edition of Mark Twain’s 19th-century travelogue.
Twain’s account of a five-month-long excursion overseas was originally published in 1869. In 1867, the author set out on a ship, the Quaker City, on a voyage to the Holy Land. The journey took Twain to places as disparate as the Azores and Nazareth. He viewed a morgue in Paris, he and his fellow passengers were “fumigated” in Italy, and in Egypt he toured the inside of a pyramid. Along with way, he offers his humorous and critical observations. On the island of Fayal, he remarks, “Nobody comes here, and nobody goes away”; it is a place where any sort of news “is a thing unknown.” He describes Jerusalem as a city so small that a fast walker could go outside the walls and “walk entirely around the city in an hour.” This edition features some 1,200 new footnotes meant to cover “people, places and events mentioned by Twain.” There is also additional supplementary material, including articles written by three other passengers from the trip. Illustrations from the original publication are restored in full. Twain’s adventure through foreign lands is an enticing one as readers get to experience travel in the 1800s through one of America’s most famous voices. (Twain lives up to his cantankerous reputation when he refers to the Mosque of St. Sophia—known now as Hagia Sophia—as “the rustiest old barn in heathendom.”) He doesn’t disdain everything; as Twain later reflects on the sea at night, “in the dirges of the night wind the songs of old forgotten ages find utterance again.” Some of the accompanying new footnotes feel unnecessary: readers probably don’t need to be informed of what the Azores are. But ultimately, Twain’s fascinating journey finds a new level of accessibility in this volume.
A thoroughly well-organized rendition of this classic, snarky work.Pub Date: June 8, 2024
ISBN: 9798990999817
Page Count: 736
Publisher: Quint Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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