A compelling argument that will inspire robust debate.
McConnell argues that there’s nothing more American than the ideal of motherhood—especially when the exploitation of mothers benefits capitalism.
The United States, Oman, and Papua New Guinea are the only three nations on Earth not offering paid parental leave, per the author. McConnell, a lawyer, asserts that this is due to the autonomy myth—the mentality that’s been responsible for keeping women and other marginalized groups down since the Pilgrims first set foot on Plymouth Rock. She perfectly encapsulates this mindset, defining it as believing “Independence is good and normal; dependence is depraved and abnormal.” The author makes her case in supremely cogent and delightfully pointed terms, conducting an intensive interrogation of female oppression: “Not coincidentally, the positive sides of these [independent] values are all manly virtues. Women are traditionally associated with dependency and assigned the work of caring for needy dependents, so denigration of dependency is fundamentally misogynistic.” And just so readers don’t start thinking the autonomy myth has only been weaponized against motherhood, McConnell explores how it’s also been used in other aspects of American life, including slavery. “One of the arguments against providing any assistance to the newly freed was that it would breed dependence,” she observes. The author starts strong with her well-researched (the text is supported by an extensive body of scholarly endnotes) takedown of what she sees as the perversity of the American economic system and never loses steam: “Each of us arrives in a state of debt,” she writes. “Far from being pathological, dependency is universal and inevitable. Once you acknowledge this basic human fact, the goal of ending dependency is revealed as truly bizarre.” Expect even the staunchest conservatives to call up their mothers with sincere thanks, and maybe even a little bit of contrition, after reading this one.
A compelling argument that will inspire robust debate.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9798896363149
Page Count: 256
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2025
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
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