A candid memoir that both embraces and remains captive to the Elvis legacy.
Navigating life beyond the King’s shadow.
In the nearly half-century since Elvis Presley’s death, the public’s persistent fascination with the King of Rock ’n’ Roll has sustained attention for those within his orbit. Priscilla Presley, having gained renewed visibility following Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis and Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla—the latter based on her 1985 memoir, Elvis and Me—returns once more to this well-traversed narrative. She recounts their courtship (beginning when she was 14 and Elvis 24) through their brief six-year marriage that ended with her quest to forge an identity beyond Elvis’ influence: “I left the love of my life because I could no longer endure our way of life. I had to find my own life before I could figure out how Elvis fit into it. I left as gently as I could, but there was no way to do it without pain.” The memoir eventually shifts focus, chronicling her subsequent journey—love affairs; an acting career that included roles on Dallas and in The Naked Gun movies; raising daughter Lisa Marie and son Navarone; her relationships with her four grandchildren (including actress Riley Keough); and profound family tragedies, including the deaths of her grandson Benjamin and Lisa Marie. “The Presley family has endured a particularly painful kind of loss….For generations, we Presleys have had to bury our children.” While maintaining an engaging voice throughout and offering colorful anecdotes about her entertainment career and personal life, the memoir nonetheless reveals an underlying reality: Even decades later, her narrative and public identity remain inextricably tethered to her famous ex-husband, a connection this latest work both acknowledges and reaffirms. “The more than four decades of living without him have taught me how rare and extraordinary he was as a human being. How rare and extraordinary our love for each other was. I have never felt anything remotely like it since.”
A candid memoir that both embraces and remains captive to the Elvis legacy.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9780306836480
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 28, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
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
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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