Essential history for art and comics aficionados.
An intimate biography of legendary cartoonist Robert Crumb.
Far out, era defining, and often deeply problematic, Crumb’s comics captured the zeitgeist of the ’60s and ’70s counterculture and continue to inspire legions of artists today. Emerging from a traumatic youth with unfiltered sexual hang-ups and a love of prewar comics, Crumb grew to be an unlikely hero of the scene. His characters like Fritz the Cat and the bearded guru Mr. Natural ushered in an acid-washed wave of irreverent adult comics that, biographer Nadel (It’s Life as I See It, 2011, etc.) explains, built an audience across “overlapping cultures: stoned hippies who spotted a fellow traveler, intellectuals who could see its meta-layers, and comics fans who respected the drawing and verve.” A collaborative champion, Crumb published anthologies like Zap and Weirdo, in which he used his star power to support the work of other contributors. Drawn in virtuosic inky crosshatch, his brazen comics are at once stunning and troubling to read, often teeming with misogyny and sexual deviance. But Nadel explains Crumb is “willing and compelled to expose his darkest impulses to exemplify the male id; he risks being shunned to demonstrate the viciousness of racism. He demands we pay attention no matter the cost.” Crumb’s great success can be traced to the palpable trust between Nadel and his subject: Nadel warmly channels present-day Crumb’s elder remembrances throughout the biography in a way that enlightens the text with an unsuspecting maturity. “Robert imposed just one condition on this book,” Nadel writes in his foreword, “that I be honest about his faults, look closely at his compulsions, and examine the racially and sexually charged aspects of his work.” A tall order, as much of Crumb’s seminal oeuvre is built on his own perverted fantasies, but Nadel deftly contextualizes the artist’s salacious output within a finely rendered record of the artist’s private life and within an electric chronicle of the underground comics wave.
Essential history for art and comics aficionados.Pub Date: April 15, 2025
ISBN: 9781982144005
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.
An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.
Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”
A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781668211656
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 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
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