You Can't Be Serious

June 1, 2021

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist De Vis� (Andy and Don) offers an extensively researched biography of B.B. King, the immortal King of the Blues. Former New York Times music critic Horowitz investigates the crucial issue why classical music in America has remained white despite Dvor�k's Prophecy that a "great and noble" school of American classical music would emerge from the Black music he had heard while visiting America. Edited by novelist Cameron, Solid Ivory ranges from fabled director Ivory's first meeting with work-life partner Ismail Merchant through his memories of Satyajit Ray, Federico Fellini, Vanessa Redgrave, George Cukor, Kenneth Clark, Bruce Chatwin, and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala to his winning the Academy Award at 89 for Call Me by Your Name. Edited by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Muldoon, who benefited from dozens of interviews with McCartney over five years, The Lyrics presents the definitive texts of 154 McCartney songs with personal commentary; look for an international press conference on Facebook event upon publication. The grandson of Gandhian freedom fighters and immigrant parents, Penn ignored advice to do something practical and, as he chronicles in You Can't Be Serious, became a leading actor; he also served as President Obama's Liaison to Young Americans, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and the Arts (125,000-copy first printing). Readers travel with influential rapper Raekwon the Chef as he ascends From Staircase to Stage, from performing on Staten Island stairs to cofounding the Wu-Tang Clan to making a platinum solo debut (75,000-copy first printing). Author of the New York Times best-selling The Beatles, Spitz now documents the ferociously successful Led Zeppelin.

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2021
How the ambitious, idealistic son of Indian immigrants became a force for change as both a beloved comic actor and an accidental public servant. Though some news stories about Penn's memoir tout it as a coming-out story, that topic is barely mentioned in this personal history. Bullied for his ethnic background from kindergarten onward, the author points to seeing the Mira Nair film Mississippi Masala at 15 as a life-changing experience, primarily because "brown people" are on screen doing something besides "eating monkey brains," and secondarily because "having sex with someone like Denzel Washington might be a real possibility someday!" Nevertheless, he writes, "discovering my sexuality was still a ways off," and he doesn't mention it further until the charming account of finding his current partner during the period he worked in the Obama White House for the Office of Public Engagement. What he does discuss in depth is the outrageous casual racism that plagued every phase of his career, from the agent who wouldn't meet him in his college days at UCLA, because "you might play a cabdriver once or twice, but it wouldn't be worth his time and effort to represent someone who isn't going to work regularly," all the way through NBC's rough handling of Penn's dream project, Sunnyside, in 2019. After being forced to do an Indian accent during a one-line appearance on Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Penn almost lost the part of a character named "Taj Mahal Badalandabad" in Van Wilder to a White actor in brownface. The one place that the author found diversity and equity was the Obama campaign. His involvement there, and then in the White House, is recounted with characteristic humility and good humor. No mention is made of the Trump years or the pandemic, which seems just as well. Penn has a pleasing ability to be serious and funny at the same time. A story well worth hearing.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.