A superb biography of a singular life.
A biography of a troubadour’s triumph over major challenges and against considerable odds before succumbing to the time bomb within.
Before Justin Townes Earle emerged as an Americana avatar, he was known mainly for the long shadow cast by his father, country outlaw Steve Earle. His father had become known for his druggy misbehavior as much as his music, before recovery turned his life around. Justin long claimed he was mainly raised by his mother, but her economic and psychological pressures didn’t provide much balance. He went back and forth between the two but spent too much time on his own, unsupervised. He could be alternately sweet and feral, strong-willed and fragile, barely schooled and occasionally institutionalized. Whether because of his father’s example or in spite of him, he found a lifeline in music. While battling his own addiction demons, he turned himself into a disciplined songwriter, a virtuosic guitarist, and an engaging performer. He forged a style deeply rooted in Southern regionalism, transcending race and musical category. He also developed an affinity for matching buoyant music with darker lyrics, many drawn from his experiences with heroin and family history. He hit an artistic peak breakthrough with 2010’s Harlem River Blues, but his life was falling apart. As this biography by journalist Bernstein illuminates with depth and nuance, few needed a support system more than Earle, and few were quicker to burn bridges. He hated to be told what to do, and his resistance turned to rage when he was abusing drugs and alcohol. Where his extended recovery early in the century had provided a cautionary tale, his less-public relapses turned tragic—amid pressures compounded by touring, recording, publicizing, marrying, and parenting. Neither tough love nor unconditional love seemed to work. In August 2020, after the Covid-19 pandemic had shut much of everything down, Earle wasn’t discovered for a few days after an accidental overdose of cocaine laced with fentanyl. “He had died,” writes Bernstein, “little more than a mile from the hospital in which he’d been born.”
A superb biography of a singular life.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9780306833274
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Da Capo
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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 substantive, dishy, entertaining glimpse into Hollywood royalty.
The Oscar-winning actor and producer opens up about filmmaking, sex, drugs, and escaping his father’s shadow.
Despite its casual, just-shooting-the-breeze title, Douglas’ memoir is detailed and precision-engineered to entertain; as a filmmaker who won his first Oscar as a producer (for 1975’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), he knows a successful story needs clarity and conflict to work. The son of screen legend Kirk Douglas, he was well-acquainted with celebrity at an early age; witnessing his parents’ divorce, he spent much of his youth acting out. (He paid for college by selling weed by the suitcase-load.) After years of stalls and failures, he broke through on TV with the ’70s cop show The Streets of San Francisco. But small-screen work (along with his nepo-baby status) made breaking into big-screen roles harder until 1984’s Romancing the Stone made him a star and 1987’s Wall Street earned him a second Oscar. Douglas is candid about his industry struggles—like endless budget fights and betraying his father, who was promised the lead in Cuckoo’s Nest—and his reputation as a lothario. (Though married, he had an on-set affair with Kathleen Turner during Stone.) He’s also open about his alcohol and cocaine abuse, leading to a rehab stint, echoed in his son Cameron’s own struggles with addiction and recovery. He’s comfortable discussing controversies—the LGBTQ+ community’s protests of 1992’s Basic Instinct, his proto-MAGA character in 1993’s Falling Down—and plainly keeps an enemies list. But this story arc leaves him triumphant, with a loving wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones), his family, his health (after a cancer scare), and a late-career Emmy for playing Liberace in Behind the Candelabra (2013).
A substantive, dishy, entertaining glimpse into Hollywood royalty.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9781538782224
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
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