A fresh but dispiriting spin on an old sports story: money corrupts—and lots of money corrupts absolutely.
Sportswriter Tuohy (Larceny Games: Sports Gambling, Game Fixing and the FBI, 2013, etc.) presents, in depth, the seamy world of football gambling.
Sports are betting games, and football is no different. Tuohy, who has written about sports for many publications, including Vice, here effectively brings to light what he sees as the illusory nature of football’s vaunted integrity. Financially strapped, amateur-status college players generate significant money for vested interests, so, to the author, it hardly seems hypocritical when they accept rewards under the table. But Tuohy’s biggest bugbear is the National Football League, which presents a squeaky-clean image to the world. The NFL says it doesn’t condone gambling, but such talk is meaningless, the author says, when gambling is legal and vigorous in Nevada. Tuohy admits that there’s “no record” of the biggest, most shadowy operators. But the records of police departments, the FBI, and investigative reporters offer clear evidence of an army of bookies ready to service bettors and organized crime: “Bookies are the foot soldiers of this illegal empire,” writes Tuohy. “They make the wheels turn, grinding those profits into the mob’s coffers.” They also may generate some $80 billion a year in unlawful bets, he says. His book also has much to report on the ruinous fallout from gambling, including addiction, players missing a block or faking an injury for payola, and the consequences of repeated concussions. Overall, Tuohy, who’s written at length about sports gambling in the past, is an excellent Virgil for this inferno. What makes his history of football wagering particularly pungent is that it comes in the wake of so many other football-related scandals, such as those involving physical abuse, cheating, and brain trauma. His tone is tough and common-sensical throughout, and he writes at times like he’s talking around a cigar: one “legendary oddsmaker,” he says, “was pinched by the feds” before he could hoodwink any more “noobs.”
A fresh but dispiriting spin on an old sports story: money corrupts—and lots of money corrupts absolutely.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-98-890112-4
Page Count: 274
Publisher: Mofo Press LLC
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Analyzing his craft, a careful craftsman urges with Thoreauvian conviction that writers should simplify, simplify, simplify.
A New York Times columnist and editorial board member delivers a slim book for aspiring writers, offering saws and sense, wisdom and waggery, biases and biting sarcasm.
Klinkenborg (Timothy; or, Notes of an Abject Reptile, 2006), who’s taught for decades, endeavors to keep things simple in his prose, and he urges other writers to do the same. (Note: He despises abuses of the word as, as he continually reminds readers.) In the early sections, the author ignores traditional paragraphing so that the text resembles a long free-verse poem. He urges readers to use short, clear sentences and to make sure each one is healthy before moving on; notes that it’s acceptable to start sentences with and and but; sees benefits in diagramming sentences; stresses that all writing is revision; periodically blasts the formulaic writing that many (most?) students learn in school; argues that knowing where you’re headed before you begin might be good for a vacation, but not for a piece of writing; and believes that writers must trust readers more, and trust themselves. Most of Klinkenborg’s advice is neither radical nor especially profound (“Turn to the poets. / Learn from them”), and the text suffers from a corrosive fallacy: that if his strategies work for him they will work for all. The final fifth of the text includes some passages from writers he admires (McPhee, Oates, Cheever) and some of his students’ awkward sentences, which he treats analytically but sometimes with a surprising sarcasm that veers near meanness. He includes examples of students’ dangling modifiers, malapropisms, errors of pronoun agreement, wordiness and other mistakes.
Analyzing his craft, a careful craftsman urges with Thoreauvian conviction that writers should simplify, simplify, simplify.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-307-26634-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Highly recommended—anyone at all interested in music will learn a lot from this book.
From the former Talking Heads frontman, a supremely intelligent, superbly written dissection of music as an art form and way of life.
Drawing on a lifetime of music-making as an amateur, professional, performer, producer, band member and solo artist, Byrne (Bicycle Diaries, 2009) tackles the question implicit in his title from multiple angles: How does music work on the ear, brain and body? How do words relate to music in a song? How does live performance relate to recorded performance? What effect has technology had on music, and music on technology? Fans of the Talking Heads should find plenty to love about this book. Steering clear of the conflicts leading to the band’s breakup, Byrne walks through the history, album by album, to illustrate how his views about performance and recording changed with the onset of fame and (small) fortune. He devotes a chapter to the circumstances that made the gritty CBGB nightclub an ideal scene for adventurous artists like Patti Smith, the Ramones, Blondie and Tom Verlaine and Television. Always an intensely thoughtful experimenter, here he lets us in on the thinking behind the experiments. But this book is not just, or even primarily, a rock memoir. It’s also an exploration of the radical transformation—or surprising durability—of music from the beginning of the age of mechanical reproduction through the era of iTunes and MP3s. Byrne touches on all kinds of music from all ages and every part of the world.
Highly recommended—anyone at all interested in music will learn a lot from this book.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-936365-53-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: McSweeney’s
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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