A timely, well-researched case for the necessity of Ukrainian victory.
Chowdhury, an analyst at the Global Policy Institute,surveys the geopolitical implications of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
During a 2004 visit to the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv,the author notes, he was struck by the number of citizens who believed that their nation’s “future lay with the West and not Russia.” Yet, as he traveled into the countryside, he found a more nuanced story, encountering a minority Russian-speaking population who supported Russia; some even had family members working in Moscow. The author draws on his intimate familiarity with Ukrainian and Russian perspectives to make a convincing case for the strategic value of a Ukrainian victory to global stability. He argues that Ukraine represents a “bulwark against potential Russian escalations” as far west as Poland and Germany, and also addresses the humanitarian crisis spawned by the ongoing war in which Ukrainian civilians “face the daily realities of Russian aggression,” including bombings and abductions. The book notes the advantages of sustained Ukrainian support from Western nations, but also asserts that mere financial and military aid may not be enough, noting how the Russian government has navigated sanctions to find “new life” by undercutting oil prices. Chowdhury is pragmatic in his approach; for example, he recognizes the impact of the recent U.S. presidential election and offers an astute analysis of how the European Union could leverage a Russian victory to strengthen economic, military, and political ties with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. As the author of multiple books on geopolitical history and contemporary world affairs, Chowdhury offers a scholarly evaluation of the conflict, backed by more than two dozen pages of research endnotes. His learned analysis is enhanced by an engaging writing style that will appeal to general audiences; in addition, the book’s narrative overview of Ukrainian-Russian relations provides important historical context for readers unfamiliar with the region. If the war represents, as the author compellingly suggests, “the deepest crisis in Russian-Western relations since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis,” then this is a solid introductory book on its history and implications.
A timely, well-researched case for the necessity of Ukrainian victory.Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2024
ISBN: 9798894805092
Page Count: 370
Publisher: Fabrezan & Phillipe
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 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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