A highly readable and informative introduction to managing workplace harassment.
A debut guide deals with workplace sexual harassment.
In this self-help book, Lawrence—a lawyer-turned–sports journalist who sued ESPN, charging that she suffered harassment while working there—addresses a predominantly young and female audience. She explains what sexual harassment is, how to combat it, and how to respond to it. The manual dissects the different forms harassment may take, the people who enable and perpetuate it, and the possible outcomes for women who challenge it both privately and publicly. With references to some of the well-known harassment cases of the last few years as well as situations that have been less widely publicized, the volume presents a comprehensive picture of the problem in professional settings. In addition to the practical and professional impacts of harassment, the book also explores the psychological effects, offering suggestions for managing and getting help if necessary. The author also touches on intersectionality and power dynamics as factors in harassment and the work environment. Although men’s harassment of women is the guide’s primary focus, men’s victimization is discussed as well; the book features cases of women committing and perpetuating harassment. Readers will either find Lawrence’s casual style of writing breezy and conversational or overly slangy and millennial-pandering (perpetrators are referred to throughout as “harassholes”; phrases like “Chloe from college doesn’t have it all together despite how gorge she looks on the Gram” pepper the text). But even those who prefer a different narrative voice will find it easy to follow the volume’s ample information, with end-of-chapter summaries and callout boxes highlighting key points. The manual is realistic in its approach, examining the many levels of problematic, inappropriate, and dangerous behavior as well as the consequences victims may face if they complain to superiors or pursue litigation. For those who are new to the workplace, the book is a useful look at a common hazard that delivers pragmatic advice and effective solutions without sensationalism or fearmongering.
A highly readable and informative introduction to managing workplace harassment.Pub Date: May 12, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-08411-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: TarcherPerigee
Review Posted Online: July 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A smart, rewarding consideration of football’s popularity—and eventual downfall.
A wide-ranging writer on his football fixation.
Is our biggest spectator sport “a practical means for understanding American life”? Klosterman thinks so, backing it up with funny, thought-provoking essays about TV coverage, ethical quandaries, and the rules themselves. Yet those who believe it’s a brutal relic of a less enlightened era need only wait, “because football is doomed.” Marshalling his customary blend of learned and low-culture references—Noam Chomsky, meet AC/DC—Klosterman offers an “expository obituary” of a game whose current “monocultural grip” will baffle future generations. He forecasts that economic and social forces—the NFL’s “cultivation of revenue,” changes in advertising, et al.—will end its cultural centrality. It’s hard to imagine a time when “football stops and no one cares,” but Klosterman cites an instructive precedent. Horse racing was broadly popular a century ago, when horses were more common in daily life. But that’s no longer true, and fandom has plummeted. With youth participation on a similar trajectory, Klosterman foresees a time when fewer people have a personal connection to football, rendering it a “niche” pursuit. Until then, the sport gives us much to consider, with Klosterman as our well-informed guide. Basketball is more “elegant,” but “football is the best television product ever,” its breaks between plays—“the intensity and the nothingness,” à la Sartre—provide thrills and space for reflection or conversation. For its part, the increasing “intellectual density” of the game, particularly for quarterbacks, mirrors a broader culture marked by an “ongoing escalation of corporate and technological control.” Klosterman also has compelling, counterintuitive takes on football gambling, GOAT debates, and how one major college football coach reminds him of “Laura Ingalls Wilder’s much‑loved Little House novels.” A beloved sport’s eventual death spiral has seldom been so entertaining.
A smart, rewarding consideration of football’s popularity—and eventual downfall.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593490648
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
