A closely observed, well-argued examination of how athletes have used their fame to advance civil rights.
Sports journalist Steele probes the long history of civil rights protest on the part of athletes in America.
Former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick figures at the center of the story, though he is just one player in a rich heritage of athletic activism. The author begins with Paul Robeson, who began his career at Rutgers with letters in football, track, baseball, and basketball. “Sports had put him on the national radar,” writes Steele, “but his many other pursuits throughout segregated America had kept him there.” Part of the price Robeson paid for his activism was the loss of his passport, as happened to boxing great Muhammad Ali as he refused induction into the military. Steele notes that Kaepernick’s protest began not by taking a knee but simply by refusing to stand for the national anthem, which might have gone overlooked had a reporter not asked about it; taking a knee added urgency to the issue while costing Kaepernick a spot on the roster. “The very nature of his protest, of course, lent itself to categorizing the reactions along racial lines,” writes Steele. Many Black athletes came to his defense, such as Jim Brown and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, while many White athletes insisted that Kaepernick was dishonoring the country by his actions. Yet race is not a monolith. As Steele writes, Tiger Woods has made a long career by going along to get along, palling around with Donald Trump—one of Kaepernick’s most furious detractors—in his devil’s bargain. At the time, “the bar of expectations for Woods was essentially on the floor.” There it remains, while, Steele predicts, just as the nation came around to accepting Tommie Smith’s and John Carlos’ raised fists at the 1968 Olympics, in 50 years, Kaepernick will be commemorated as a warrior for civil rights.
A closely observed, well-argued examination of how athletes have used their fame to advance civil rights.Pub Date: July 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-4399-2173-9
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Temple Univ. Press
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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