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SOCCER WITHOUT BORDERS

JÜRGEN KLINSMANN, COACHING THE U.S. MEN'S NATIONAL SOCCER TEAM, AND THE QUEST FOR THE WORLD CUP

Kirschbaum provides a welcome sketch of Klinsmann, a thoughtful man of the world who has for years lived in California and...

A sympathetic look at the man who is trying to transform American soccer and the methods he is using.

Go to any article about U.S. Men’s National Team coach Jürgen Klinsmann and read the comment section. A fight inevitably breaks out between those who are fully on board with the former German captain and manager’s efforts to transform American soccer and those who look askance at what they see as arrogant demands to Europeanize the American system. Germany-based foreign correspondent Kirschbaum (Burning Beethoven: the Eradication of German Culture in the United States during World War I, 2015) is firmly in the former camp. The hiring of Klinsmann in 2011 was widely seen in soccer circles as a coup for the sport in the U.S. He had been a World Cup winner as the star striker for the German team and served as his country’s head coach from 2004 to 2006, leading them out of a dark period by engaging in reforms similar to those he would bring to the American coaching job. Kirschbaum clearly admires Klinsmann and supports the changes he is attempting to bring to American soccer. Indeed, at times this book reads like a hagiography, with nary a criticism to be found. The author blends a biographical sketch of Klinsmann with an investigation—relatively brief, given the book’s subtitle and putative goal—of the ways he has tried to transform coaching and program development wherever he has been in charge. Kirschbaum writes well, though it can be difficult to discern his intended audience. He clearly wants to engage the growing legion of American soccer fans, yet he also explains basic concepts about the sport that virtually anyone with an interest in this book will already know.

Kirschbaum provides a welcome sketch of Klinsmann, a thoughtful man of the world who has for years lived in California and who cannot be pigeonholed as merely a European trying to remake American soccer in the Old World image.

Pub Date: May 10, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-250-09831-3

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Picador

Review Posted Online: March 30, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016

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WHY WE SWIM

An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.

A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.

For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).

An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.

Pub Date: April 14, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Algonquin

Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020

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CONCUSSION

Effectively sobering. Suffice it to say that Pop Warner parents will want to armor their kids from head to toe upon reading...

A maddening, well-constructed tale of medical discovery and corporate coverup, set in morgues, laboratories, courtrooms, and football fields.

Nigeria-born Bennet Omalu is perhaps an unlikely hero, a medical doctor board-certified in four areas of pathology, “anatomic, clinical, forensic, and neuropathology,” and a well-rounded specialist in death. When his boss, celebrity examiner Cyril Wecht (“in the autopsy business, Wecht was a rock star”), got into trouble for various specimens of publicity-hound overreach, Omalu was there to offer patient, stoical support. The student did not surpass the teacher in flashiness, but Omalu was a rock star all his own in studying the brain to determine a cause of death. Laskas’ (Creative Writing/Univ. of Pittsburgh; Hidden America, 2012, etc.) main topic is the horrific injuries wrought to the brains and bodies of football players on the field. Omalu’s study of the unfortunate brain of Pittsburgh Steeler Mike Webster, who died in 2002 at 50 of a supposed heart attack, brought new attention to the trauma of concussion. Laskas trades in sportwriter-ese, all staccato delivery full of tough guyisms and sports clichés: “He had played for fifteen seasons, a warrior’s warrior; he played in more games—two hundred twenty—than any other player in Steelers history. Undersized, tough, a big, burly white guy—a Pittsburgh kind of guy—the heart of the best team in history.” A little of that goes a long way, but Laskas, a Pittsburgher who first wrote of Omalu and his studies in a story in GQ, does sturdy work in keeping up with a grim story that the NFL most definitely did not want to see aired—not in Omalu’s professional publications in medical journals, nor, reportedly, on the big screen in the Will Smith vehicle based on this book.

Effectively sobering. Suffice it to say that Pop Warner parents will want to armor their kids from head to toe upon reading it.

Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-8129-8757-7

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015

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