A highly engrossing account, and not just for sports fans.
Kaufman, the assistant vice president of clinical affairs for the Office of Health Science at Michigan State University,recaps his earliest days navigating the organized chaos that is college football.
In 2010, the author writes, public awareness about the horrific impact of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) injuries in football players and other athletes was reaching new heights: “a true public panic was brewing, one that threatened to eventually turn the sport of football into something unrecognizable—or maybe even kill it all together.” That same year, Kaufman became the newest member of the Michigan State football team’s medical staff as a neurologist. His initial charge was simple: Try not to get run over by players during games, and help the coaching staff figure out a way to make football safer. The doctor’s consistently engrossing memoir doesn’t skirt the CTE issue, by any means, but it shines brightest when it tackles the emotional drama of collegiate football itself. In 2014, after years of disappointment, MSU made it back to “the Granddaddy of them all”: the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, under the leadership of head coach Mark Dantonio. Overall, Kaufman’s careful chronicle may be among the best sports-related books that readers will find this year. His account makes the drama of each game palpable, and starkly shows how high the physical stakes are—exemplified early on by the life-threatening broken neck that MSU’s star fullback Josh Rouse sustained during the author’s first season on the job. “Even when sitting in the upper deck, I understood violence was part of it all. I wasn’t a total idiot,” the always self-effacing author writes. “I just did not understand how bad the violence could be until I came down for that closer look.” His personal journey gives the memoir an emotional depth that will appeal to a wide readership. Many who’ve played for the Spartans are no doubt glad that Kaufman took this journey, and so will readers who’ve always wondered what it’s really like down on the field with the big game on the line.
A highly engrossing account, and not just for sports fans.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9781958861509
Page Count: 254
Publisher: The Sager Group LLC
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
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