Cosby

Starred review from July 28, 2014
Bill Cosby has his image complicated in this absorbing biography from former Newsweek editor Whitaker (My Long Trip Home), who traces Cosby’s rise from poverty in the Philadelphia projects where he lived with a working mom and an alcoholic and largely absent father during his feckless boyhood of academic failure. Cosby achieved success in everything he lacked in youth: wealth and fame as a superstar, a legendary role in The Cosby Show as a prosperous, doting paterfamilias, and a public voice as a crusader for education, personal responsibility, and committed parenting in the African-American community (despite personal missteps that would come back to haunt him). Along the way the author illuminates, with telling detail, Cosby’s remarkable achievements as a comedic technician who avoided easy gags and carefully honed his long-form stand-up routines while approaching acting roles with naturalistic improvisation. Cosby has been controversial for being noncontroversial—for eschewing edgy racial humor and politics in favor of a warm-hearted inclusiveness that white audiences embraced—but Whitaker shows the prickliness beneath the affable exterior and the genuine if sometimes muted concern for civil rights. He makes a persuasive case for Cosby as a groundbreaking comic and a quiet but far-ranging pioneer of black advancement. Photos.

Starred review from August 15, 2014
Readable, thoughtful life of the brilliant comedian and entrepreneur. Later generations of comedians have made a good living from portraying Bill Cosby (b. 1937) as a milquetoast unwilling to court controversy. They're unfounded, suggests Whitaker (My Long Trip Home: A Family Memoir, 2011), who was the first African-American editor of Newsweek. Cosby may incline toward a kind of meritocratic conservatism, but when he was at the peak of his game, he was always bending and breaking the rules, "stubbornly dispensing with all of the usual ingredients." He was also a pioneer, the Jackie Robinson of popular entertainment, the first black comedian to find true superstardom among a predominantly white audience, using that renown to subtly advance the civil rights agenda-the operative word being subtly, for vehicles such as the 1960s TV hit series I Spy were phenomenally influential in simply depicting the possibility of black and white people working together and enjoying friendship without reference to race at all. Nonconfrontational but earnest, Cosby also made a fortune for NBC-so much so, as Whitaker chronicles, that at one point, Cosby came close to buying the network. The author traces Cosby's rise, drawing on elements of his own life for comedic material; as Whitaker charts Cosby's growing success and elevation to one of the richest men in show business, he turns up episodes in which the eminently avuncular, cardigan-wearing comic exercised a steeliness and rough temper that "could flare suddenly and sometimes violently, particularly when he thought he was being disrespected." (For an example of Cosby's brawling capacities, see his encounter with mild-mannered liberal icon Tommy Smothers, Whitaker's account of which is worth the book's cover price alone.) Whitaker closes this lucid, often entertaining biography with a pointed look at the oft-mooted question: Did Bill Cosby make Barack Obama possible? The answer is yes, and in more ways than one. An eye-opening book and a pleasure to read.

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November 1, 2014

The first major biography of this American icon, Whitaker's book notably leaves out the long string of sexual assault allegations against the comedian and actor.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 1, 2014
Despite the warm family humor for which he is known, comedian Cosby grew up in the projects of Philadelphia with an alcoholic father and a mother who worked constantly to keep the family together. Acclaimed journalist Whitaker traces Cosby's career through stand-up routines (that eschewed profanity and steered clear of race), best-selling albums, and television. Cosby's breakthrough came with I Spy, which featured the first major role for a black man on television, and later The Cosby Show, the first television show to portray a stable black family. With his amazing affinity for children, Cosby was also a pioneer in children's television programming. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Cosby and his friends and associates, Whitaker explores Cosby's philosophy on American race relations, the role of comedy in examining controversy, and how Cosby revived the moribund NBC and changed the sit-com. Whitaker details Cosby's personal life, including the murder of his only son, an affair that tarnished his image, his philanthropy in support of black colleges, and the influence of Camille Cosby, his wife of 50 years. This is a compelling look at a man who has had a major impact on American race relations and television and whose Cosby effect helped prime the nation for its first black president.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)