Even on rereading, Talese’s work gets better, like fine wine.
Revisiting Gotham.
“New York is a city of things unnoticed,’’ Talese writes at the outset of his latest collection, a spirited compendium of pieces that deal with everything from the preferred habitations of the wild cats of Manhattan to the builders of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, the social protocols of George Plimpton’s Paris Review set, and the kidnapping of mobster Joe Bonanno. It’s a bit of misdirection. Talese is nothing if not a noticer, focusing on the grainy details that distinguish journalism that aspires to literary art from dutiful wire service reports. The book shines with the love that the author, the son of an Atlantic City tailor, bears for his adopted home, giving E.B. White’s legendary ode, Here Is New York, a run for its money. Documenting his journalistic doggedness, the entries are preceded with reproductions of Talese’s original typescript, dotted with emendations and reminders of where he wants to take the tale. Much of this deeply reported material is repurposed from earlier pieces, often updated. For example, The Bridge, detailing how the Verrazano-Narrows structure championed by “master builder’’ Robert Moses forced Brooklynites from their Bay Ridge homes, was first published as a stand-alone volume in 1959. Here, it includes a preface for a new edition, released in tandem with the 50th anniversary of its opening. His understated portrait of Bill Bonanno, the ambivalent but dutiful son of the kidnapped mobster, is notable not only for its narrative, but the skill it took to gain access to this famously private circle. The collection includes Talese’s previously published iconic piece, “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,’’ which appeared in his 2023 collection, Bartleby and Me. Despite that caveat, one must pay the nonagenarian auteur his due.
Even on rereading, Talese’s work gets better, like fine wine.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9780063392182
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A football star’s bracing account of his battle for racial equality—and how powerful forces arrayed against him.
A principled athlete strives for social justice.
Kaepernick forthrightly details the activism that earned him global renown but cost him his NFL career. In 2016, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback “was filled with disgust” after police shootings of fellow Black men in several American cities. Before a preseason game, he made a spontaneous decision: “It hit me in that moment that I should find a seat” during the national anthem. He did the same at two more games before reporters noticed. Kaepernick will forever be associated with “taking a knee” during the anthem, but he credits Eric Reid—a teammate who agreed with Kaepernick’s message—for suggesting that they kneel together during subsequent anthems. The protest changed everything for Kaepernick. President Trump vilified him. Kaepernick and his wife received death threats. And though he’d taken the 49ers to a Super Bowl, no teams would sign him. He will likely make news for his take on Jay-Z, whose lucrative partnership with the NFL was criticized as an attempt to launder the league’s reputation. Visiting Africa, where Kaepernick learns about “African leaders who willingly sold their own people to the enslavers,” he “couldn’t help but to think about Jay-Z and the NFL.” In opening chapters, Kaepernick recalls suffering traumatic racial abuse as a child. Being in “white spaces”—he was adopted by white parents—placed him “under a microscope every minute of every day.” He isn’t always nuanced, depicting some people he disagrees with as cartoonishly clueless. But his writing about how college and pro teams “lied” to him about injuries underlines his “feeling of being a disposable commodity.” A decade has passed since Kaepernick played in the NFL, but he stays fit in case “a team needing a QB” calls.
A football star’s bracing account of his battle for racial equality—and how powerful forces arrayed against him.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781538777879
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Legacy Lit/Hachette
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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