A thoroughly researched biography of an audacious scientist—and a new window into the history of high-energy physics.
A close look at a renowned experimental physicist with a dizzying career and a difficult personality.
Unlike some physicists of his day, Luis Alvarez never became a household name—perhaps, ironically, because his achievements were so numerous. A Nobel Prize winner, Alvarez isn’t known for any one thing: not for inventing the radar system that allowed planes to land in bad weather, not for designing precision detonators that exploded the plutonium bomb, not for creating the hydrogen bubble chamber that tracked the trails of elusive subatomic particles. If Alvarez is remembered for one thing, it’s not even physics: He and his son, Walter, were the first to show that the dinosaurs were likely doomed by an asteroid strike. All of which gives biographer Nevala-Lee endless material to weave into a story of intellectual restlessness. We see Alvarez—a “scientific Indiana Jones”—harnessing cosmic rays to search for secret chambers in the Chephren pyramid at Giza; signing his name in crayon on the atomic bomb; and combing moon dust for evidence of mysterious particles. For all of Alvarez’s adventures, Nevala-Lee’s narration seems at times too even-keeled, opting for staid detail over emotional resonance. Alvarez comes across as a maverick foiled at times by his own ego, as when he brags to strangers about classified war work. Through other characters, we glimpse something darker, a man who humiliated his colleagues, harangued his inferiors, bullied anyone who dared to disagree with him. Still, said a mentee, “people tolerated Luie Alvarez because it was so exciting to do physics with him.” Readers will likely feel the same. One wild experiment after the next, Nevala-Lee skillfully uses Alvarez’s story to provide a sweeping look at 20th-century physics, with its complicated ties to politics and culture, from the Manhattan Project to the Kennedy assassination. Indeed, by combining his bubble chamber with computer technology, Alvarez helped usher in today’s “big science,” which leaves little room for singular heroes of the sort Alvarez sought to be.
A thoroughly researched biography of an audacious scientist—and a new window into the history of high-energy physics.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781324075103
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 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
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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