An entertaining look back at a life in full.
Revisiting glossy days.
Carter navigates the path from his upbringing in rural Canada to founding Spy magazine, a delightfully snarky publication perhaps most famous for labeling Donald Trump (to his indignation) as a “shortfingered vulgarian,’’ fast-tracking to a long, successful run at the helm of Vanity Fair before moving on to his current gig with the digital publication Air Mail. But his subtitle gives the game away—Was the Vanity Fair era, a skillful amalgam of celebrity journalism and investigative reporting, really a “golden age” of magazine journalism? In this admittedly enjoyable account, it seems more like a product, however well executed, of affluent times, generous pre-internet advertisers, and aspirational readers eager to feel part of a world beyond their income levels or societal status. Carter’s odyssey, surprisingly, is most engrossing when he recounts surviving freezing winters and a stint as a railroad lineman before making his way to New York, that “shimmering vessel of opportunity and reward,” where, Gatsby-like, he begins to climb the greasy pole by talking his way into a stint at Time magazine. Bored by the stultifying culture of the newsweekly, he and a colleague, Kurt Andersen, hole up to create prototypes of Spy. “We wanted the voice,” he writes, “to be a mixture of Time-ese from the 1940s, with its dense, fact-filled writing, and the saucy manner of London’s Private Eye”—and Mad magazine. “We wanted to be outsiders on the ramparts picking off the big shots.’’ Mission accomplished. But as Spy’s financial fortunes foundered, Carter was wooed to take over Vanity Fair and join the Establishment, gaining more recognition from the VF Oscar Party than journalism, whose halcyon age was better exemplified by Harold Ross’ New Yorker or H.L. Mencken’s American Mercury. Curiously, Carter begins this memoir by reciting the “Deep Throat” scoop revealing Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s Watergate source. It’s solid reporting, but closer to gossip than lasting literary value. The going was good—but it appears to be gone.
An entertaining look back at a life in full.Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593655900
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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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