‘An Unexpected Life: A Memoir’ by Gloria Steinem
“An Unexpected Life is filled with lines that now feel prophetic,” said Scaachi Koul in Slate. When the feminist activist and icon died at 92 in early September, her newest memoir was three weeks from publication, making it all the more poignant when a reader comes across lines such as “Being remembered with love is the best form of immortality.” Steinem was, she wrote here, still working on the causes she believed in and expecting to live to 100. But she was also aware she had an obligation, as a leader running short on time, to remind younger allies of progress made in her lifetime, including in the opening of countless professions to women and in making domestic violence far less invisible. At its best, An Unexpected Life “reads as a nudge to younger generations to keep up the good fight, to notice the wins where they happen, and to not get discouraged.”
“The striking thing about An Unexpected Life is how bland it is,” said Meghan Cox Gurdon in The Wall Street Journal. Steinem didn’t lack for good material. As a journalist in her 20s, she went undercover as a Playboy bunny and trailed the Beatles on their first U.S. tour. She also ran a youth group funded by the CIA in the years before she co-founded Ms. magazine in 1971. “In her heyday, Steinem had zip,” authoring such memorable lines as “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” But here she smothers even potentially great anecdotes with bromides. After recalling how she was once bitten by a rat during her Ohio childhood and had to hitchhike to a hospital in the middle of the night, she counsels readers not to let rats remain “unseen,” writing: “If we share our experiences, we begin to discover that we are not alone.”
In the book’s first half, at least, “one is reminded of the improbability of her journey,” said Emma Brockes in The Guardian. “Raised on instability,” Steinem grew up “remarkably free” from the constraints placed on so many other women, and once she assumed the role of an activist, she was “the real thing,” in it for neither the attention nor the money. She shares that she saved so little well into midlife that she worried she’d one day be sleeping in the New York City subway—and jokes that she’d have taken up organizing the other bag ladies. For much of her life, though, she “had a very clear idea of what she was supposed to be doing,” and “my God she did it right to the end.” She mentions at one point having jeans older than many people she was working with. “We should all be so lucky; what a life.”
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‘Roll the Calls: A Memoir’ by Ari Emanuel
“I don’t know why Ari Emanuel wrote a memoir, even after reading it,” said Sam Wasson in Air Mail. Yes, Emanuel is a powerful Hollywood agent who’s so famously explosive that he inspired Entourage’s Ari Gold. He’d also seem to have great stories to share. But there are few such tales in this instant best seller, either because Emanuel doesn’t know what he’s fighting for or because his business is now more about mergers than deals that get movies made. Written in “a punchy, give-’em-hell style that strains to evoke Robert Evans’ classic The Kid Stays in the Picture,” Roll the Calls is “relentless and fun,” but “self-consciously so”—the kind of book that thinks there’s more power in the words “F--- you” when the phrase is broken into two paragraphs.
Emanuel spends much of the book “trying to justify his unrelenting rage and appetite for revenge,” said Maxwell Adler in Vanity Fair. He traces his anger back to childhood, when he was a bullied suburban Chicago special ed student whose dyslexia prevented him from keeping up with older brothers Zeke, now a prominent scientist, and Rahm, a current Democratic presidential hopeful. Ari credits his appetite for battle with the success he’s since achieved in a career that hadn’t even peaked when, in 2024, the agency he co-founded was valued at $13 billion. Fittingly, he also now runs a sports and entertainment conglomerate that owns both the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) and WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment).
“Roll the Calls is being sold as a Hollywood insider’s tell-all,” said Tim Robey in The Telegraph (U.K.). Problem is, Emanuel’s still working on his clients’ behalf, so while he freely ridicules rival agents and certain rival industry titans, “we hear nothing about the challenges of representing Mark Wahlberg or Oprah Winfrey or Donald Trump.” Judging from Emanuel’s memoir, “nothing sticks in his memory better than who got the upper hand during boardroom merger negotiations (usually himself) or who swore the most (himself).” Still, I’ll concede he’s a bit scary. “The very idea of him reading this lightly negative review brings a cold sweat to the back of my neck.”
