A poignant reflection on life after retirement and cancer.
A retiree and cancer survivor recalls his post-entrepreneurial life in this memoir.
Born in St. Louis in 1941, McIntyre spent nearly two decades in the corporate trenches working for Procter & Gamble before branching out on his own for the next 30 years, founding a foodservice sales and marketing agency. In 2010, he was diagnosed with throat cancer and decided to sell his business while undergoing treatment. The story of four life-altering months in 2010, during which he transitioned into retirement while undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatment, lie at the center of his first memoir, There Are No Answers Here, Only Questions (2023). In this follow-up, the author covers the next 14 years, from 2010-2024, as he recovered from cancer and forged a new life after retirement. Like many who leave their careers, he grappled with adjusting to a new life. “My company had been my ‘identity,’” he recalls, “But now, with my identity gone, who was I?” As detailed in the book, he ultimately found a new purpose through exercise and community service. Guided by the motto “poco a poco” (little by little), he rebuilt his physical health, first by walking in the backyard, then by traversing a parking lot to get to his car, and eventually by running short distances. Ultimately, he became an avid swimmer and cycler—until he met another setback when he was thrown from his bicycle after being struck by an inattentive driver and sustained a brain injury.
Embracing the Latin maxim Per Adversa Satisfactio Est (“satisfaction through adversity”), McIntyre is relentlessly optimistic, emphasizing how each setback led him to feel greater gratitude for his loved ones. He also found a new post-retirement identity in the act of giving back, working with Habitat for Humanity building houses in Charlotte, North Carolina, and El Salvador. The author’s Christian faith is recurring theme—the work contains multiple biblical references, though McIntyre never proselytizes. Indeed, he embraces a “faith that transcends faith,” emphasizing the “oneness of all things” that “binds us together.” While the text includes the occasional flashback to the author’s years in corporate America or his experiences as a fraternity brother at a small, liberal arts college, the memoir’s unique emphasis on McIntyre’s post-retirement life—with its humbling array of identity crises, health scares, and the author’s decision to move with his wife to a continuous care retirement community—makes the book stand out in a genre stereotypically defined by self-aggrandizement. McIntyre’s writing style blends poignant reflections with often humorous, self-deprecating anecdotes. While inside an MRI machine stripped down to his underwear with a traumatic brain injury, for instance, the author recalls utilizing one of his meditation practices in which he repeated “Gracias a Dios”(Thank God) while taking deep breaths; it was during this moment of Zen focus and gratitude that the medical technician told him to “stop it and breathe like a normal person.” Another chapter recalls his failed attempts at becoming a novelist: He put chapters of a lighthearted rom-com story on his blog until he realized “no one was reading it anymore.” These moments of humorous self-awareness, blended with the author’s emotional maturity, make for a sincere, engaging memoir.
A poignant reflection on life after retirement and cancer.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2025
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: yesterday
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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