A trenchant call for justice in the face of “the ferocity suffered by the Palestinian population.”
“A blemish on humanity.”
Albanese, an Italian lawyer who serves as the U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, opens with an address to that body’s representatives, asking plaintively, “Is it possible that after forty-two thousand people have been killed, you cannot empathize with the Palestinians?” That speech is from October 2024, and of course the number is far higher now, but Albanese’s point remains: namely, that “now the task at hand is to stop the genocide and find a way forward.” She writes, peace is “possible,” but only if both sides commit to it. What is more, she notes, that commitment extends to other nations of the world, including President Donald Trump’s U.S., which—having banned Albanese from entry—“has repeatedly intimidated anyone who dares to touch Israel,” no matter what international crimes Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel commits. Albanese enumerates such “atrocious crimes”: the sundering of humanitarian law and the suppression of the rights of sovereign citizens of another state, the imposition of martial law, the seizure of private property for illegal settlements, and the repeated violation of a fundamental U.N. tenet, “that it is forbidden to acquire territory by force.” Assisting Albanese in driving these points home is a chorus of Palestinian voices, most affectingly those of children, one of whom says, with wisdom beyond years, “Being afraid of death doesn’t stop you from dying; it prevents you from living.” Emphasizing that “I am not here to justify any crimes that the Palestinians may have committed against Israeli civilians in the long course of their oppression,” Albanese suggests a different kind of resistance on the part of allies to punish Israel economically by means of divestitures and other instruments, while pursuing humanitarian relief and legal remedies.
A trenchant call for justice in the face of “the ferocity suffered by the Palestinian population.”Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9781635426038
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
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
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
