A beautifully designed history of iconic nonprofit advertisements.
An activist surveys socially conscious advertising strategies as he melds an illustrated memoir with advice and critiques of runaway capitalism and environmental damage.
With hundreds of millions of dollars spent daily on razzle-dazzle advertising, “corporate or commercial interests dominate mass-media, ‘free-speech’ ad expressions in the US,” notes career adman Mander (The Capitalism Papers, 2012, etc.). Despite titans like the Jolly Green Giant and the Geiko Gecko, this book argues, noncorporate campaigners operating on “exquisitely small budgets” have produced ads that have had “startling success” in public engagement. Many were one-offs with short newspaper runs that maximized their efficacy through a careful blending of jarring headlines and images with informational text. As the co-founder of the United States’ first nonprofit ad agency, Public Interest Communications, and a lifelong environmentalist and critic of capitalism, Mander is perhaps the nation’s most experienced activist advertiser. He devotes significant attention to his own years in the profession, which included antisemitic experiences such as being told by a Park Avenue ad agency in 1959: “Your hair is too kinky; try Seventh Avenue.” That initial brush with the discrimination in the industry began the yearslong transformation of an Ivy League business school graduate “from Adman to Anti-Adman,” which led to his co-founding of PIC. A skilled writer, Mander gives engaging behind-the-scenes looks into the opposite worlds of advertising and nonprofits, describing the backstories of effective ads for groups such as the Sierra Club, Planned Parenthood, and Friends of the Earth. Yet the undisputed stars of this book are the socially conscious advertisements themselves, which are reprinted in full-page, high-quality images and deal with topics from animal rights and the environment to gun control. Indigenous voices and perspectives, also heard in Mander’s previous books, are highlighted in critiques of environmental degradation and unfettered capitalism. The book ends with tips (“Secrets of Success”) for activists and nonprofits on how to create high-impact advertisements on a limited budget, though it leaves you wondering how the book’s print-centric approach applies to social media.
A beautifully designed history of iconic nonprofit advertisements.Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-907791-81-2
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Synergetic Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 20, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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