An often engaging but unevenly executed imagining of JFK’s formative years.
In Badler’s work, a young John F. Kennedy grows into a man ready to carry the weight of a nation’s hopes and fears.
The book, which includes some scenes with fictionalized interactions and dialogue, begins with Kennedy’s teenage days racing boats with his older brother, Joseph Jr., to his successful first run for Congress in 1946. Along the way, the author adeptly considers the confluence of private and public influences on Kennedy’s life. One of the main threads that runs through the story is Kennedy’s occasionally contentious relationships with his success-oriented father, emotionally absent mother, and hyper-competitive older brother, Joseph Jr. As he begins to escape his family’s influence—first, briefly, at Princeton University and then at Harvard—he begins a series of affairs with women that come to dominate his life to the extent that he explains to an aide: “if I don’t have sex once a day, I get a headache.” Kennedy also battles with chronic ill health but serves effectively as a man-on-the-ground for his ambassador father in the lead-up to World War II and as the U.S. Navy commander of PT-109. A crucial moment of growth comes when Kennedy decides to engage only one engine while in enemy waters, which leads to disaster. Despite harsh criticism for his actions, he’s recommended for a Silver Star; Jack chooses to stay overseas until a diagnosis of malaria and colitis necessitates his return home to New England in 1943. It’s after the tragic loss of his older brother that Jack’s political career begins in earnest.
This well-researched account of the future president’s youth is built on the premise that in order to “understand the man, one must first understand the boy.” Over the course of this book, Badler succeeds at presenting an account that’s well-informed and engaging. Reflections attributed to Kennedy, such as “sex and politics had become indistinguishable. Likewise, blackmail and foreign intrigue,” underscore the author’s efforts to connect his subject’s frequent sexual excursions and early misdeeds to his growing political relevance. The book’s imaginative reconstructions allow readers a close look at Kennedy’s psyche, although some lines, such as “Jack didn’t feel any different now that he was a millionaire” and “it had to be an awful burden, thought Jack, to carry the weight of a nation’s hopes and fears” sometimes require a certain suspension of disbelief. Although the author includes source notes that document some of what the book relates, a lack of in-text citations or footnotes makes it difficult to easily assess what is fact and what is extrapolation, as in passages such as “The German beauty was resplendent in white billowy trousers,” and descriptions in the book’s initial “List of Characters,” such as journalist Inga Arvad: “perfect complexion accentuated by high cheekbones; only minor flaw was a gap between her two front teeth, which Jack liked.” More narrative distance might have allowed for a more rigorous examination of the tension between Jack’s immense privilege and his personal struggles.
An often engaging but unevenly executed imagining of JFK’s formative years.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781610886765
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Bancroft Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 8, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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