A convincing indictment of elite colleges for reproducing inequality while hiding behind their historical clout.
A potent investigation into how elite colleges and universities in the U.S. perpetuate economic inequalities and fail to properly address the country’s ongoing racial divide.
NoneMany people believe that private, elite colleges reward merit and hard work, and while that may be true, there are countless other factors at play. Mandery—a Harvard graduate, Emmy and Peabody winner, and author of A Wild Justice: The Death and Resurrection of Capital Punishment in America, among other books—plainly shows how “elite colleges are guilty of cementing, reproducing, and exacerbating inequality in America.” Ivy League colleges, and others of their ilk, open their doors mainly to those least in need. “For the overwhelming majority,” the author notes, “they take children who have been the beneficiary of a lifetime of privilege, convert that privilege into a degree of value, steer these students into careers in finance, cultivate disdain for those who work for the common good, [and] systematically disadvantage the handful of poor students of color who manage to make it through their gates.” On the other hand, public universities are “producing the lion’s share of upward mobility” and encouraging public service careers. The trend of excluding talented, low-income students from elite colleges is exacerbated by standardized testing biases, tax exemptions for higher education, the hoarding of endowments, and admissions criteria privileging legacy students and accomplishments (science fair awards, volunteering, expensive extracurricular activities, etc.) that favor affluent applicants. Mandery offers a variety of strategies to counter this problem—e.g., basing admissions decisions on high school rank and increasing the sizes of entering classes. Of course, students attend college for reasons other than status: gaining access to specific occupations, transitioning to adulthood, or just the sheer joy of learning. Living a decent and satisfying life, as Mandery shows, hardly depends on a degree from Harvard or Princeton.
A convincing indictment of elite colleges for reproducing inequality while hiding behind their historical clout.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-62097-695-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
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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
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