Featuring 341 Industry-First Reviews of Fiction, Nonfiction, Children'sand YA books KIRKUSVOL. LXXXIX, NO. 4 | 15 FEBRUARY 2021 REVIEWS Bassem Youssef The doctor, comedian, and podcaster is now a middle-grade author p. 98 Also in the issue: Brandon Hobson, Joy McCullough, and Covid Comics from the editor’s desk Living in the Covid Moment Chairman BY TOM BEER HERBERT SIMON President & Publisher MARC WINKELMAN John Paraskevas # It was nearly one year ago that the world as we know it transformed. In Chief Executive Officer early March, I was still working at Kirkus’ office in midtown Manhattan MEG LABORDE KUEHN when we began to discuss if it made sense for all employees to come in every
[email protected] Editor-in-Chief day—thus riding the subway and potentially being exposed to the coronavi- TOM BEER rus. The first New York City cases of Covid-19 had just been reported. No
[email protected] Vice President of Marketing sooner had the staff agreed on a staggered schedule than everything in the SARAH KALINA city shut down and we began this yearlong stretch of working from home.
[email protected] We’ve all weathered enormous changes in the past year—it sometimes Managing/Nonfiction Editor ERIC LIEBETRAU felt like living in slow motion and at warp speed simultaneously. Histo-
[email protected] rians of the future will tell the story of this period, but in the meantime, Fiction Editor LAURIE MUCHNICK we have the raw and immediate reports of poets, artists, and essayists
[email protected] living in the moment.