A gifted storyteller with vast cultural knowledge, Coe has given readers not just a map, but a true treasure.
Coe turns his acclaimed podcast series into an entertaining history of the deep roots of American popular music and show business.
The ostensible subjects of this book, which is based on the second season of the podcast that shares its name, are indeed George Jones and Tammy Wynette, the briefly married occasional collaborators who dominated country music from the 1960s to the 1980s. Jones is still considered the “Greatest Country Singer Ever” by fans and fellow musicians, while Wynette is best remembered for her “anti-feminist” anthem “Stand by Your Man.” The pair shared formative relationships with one of Nashville’s great producers, Billy Sherrill, who, in addition to nurturing their sound on vinyl, helped construct their public personas via a carefully curated catalog of songs hinting at an abiding love between them. In fact, Jones and Wynette were each uniquely troubled human beings who, at the height of their respective careers, struggled with addiction, mental illness, bad relationships, and bizarre behavior bordering on criminality. Coe’s podcast became a hit for taking an unusually meandering, even scholarly approach to its subject matter, which this book replicates. The narrative takes sudden, surprising deep dives into tangentially related areas—e.g., a history of pinball machines and jukeboxes, the recipe for moonshine, bullfighting’s metamorphosis from quasi-religious festival to proletarian sport and fashion inspiration, and much more—leaving readers to sort out the relevance. “It’s not necessary to cover such wide-ranging territory through abrupt twists and turns,” writes Coe, “while largely leaving the reader to connect the dots for themselves….But that is what I’ve chosen to do because it’s a lot more fun. There’s a difference between handing someone a twenty dollar bill and handing them a treasure map.” White’s illustrations are an added treat.
A gifted storyteller with vast cultural knowledge, Coe has given readers not just a map, but a true treasure.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9781668015186
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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