An often-compelling examination of a sport’s sins from a man with an insider’s view.
Attorney and writer Hines considers the problems of American football in this nonfiction work.
The author’s father, Glen Ray Hines, was an offensive tackle for the Houston Oilers from 1966 to 1970, and later briefly played for the New Orleans Saints and Pittsburgh Steelers. “On every play, he fired off leading with his head into a mass of human bone and flesh,” remembers Hines, who watched him from the stands of the Astrodome. In his later years, his father developed advanced dementia because of chronic traumatic encephalopathy. The author played four years of Division I college football himself, but he was happy to leave it behind. In fact, he hasn’t kept up with the sport at all—to the confusion of his sports-loving friends and family. With this book, Hines attempts to diagnose not only his own disillusionment with football—which has much deeper roots than his father’s CTE—and the waning position of the sport in the American imagination. Mixing memoir with cultural analysis, Hines investigates trends from the decline of youth participation in the sport to the National Football League’s responses to football players’ health issues over the years. He looks at the cases of college football con artist Ron Weaver, early retiree George Sauer, high-profile concussion victim Luke Kuechly, and his own father, who died in 2019. Hines writes with precision and a palpable dislike for the things he sees as corrupting the game: “The fact that fans use the term ‘we’ after a victory by their team has been coined in psychology studies as reflected glory, as opposed to using the term ‘they’ when their team loses, a practice called cutting off reflected failure,” he writes. “This psychological condition is not limited to sports alone.” The book reads like a series of essays, and there’s a fair amount of repeated information; it makes most sense to regard the book primarily as a companion to Hines’ podcast of the same title. However, the book does effectively articulate a comprehensive critique of the ethics of modern football.
An often-compelling examination of a sport’s sins from a man with an insider’s view.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9798854228183
Page Count: 330
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
“Protect your passion,” writes an NBA star in this winning exploration of how we can succeed in life.
A future basketball Hall of Famer’s rosy outlook.
Curry is that rare athlete who looks like he gets joy from what he does. There’s no doubt that the Golden State Warriors point guard is a competitor—he’s led his team to four championships—but he plays the game with nonchalance and exuberance. That ease, he says, “only comes from discipline.” He practices hard enough—he’s altered the sport by mastering the three-point shot—so that he achieves a “kind of freedom.” In that “flow state,” he says, “I can let joy and creativity take over. I block out all distractions, even the person guarding me. He can wave his arms and call me every name in the book, but I just smile and wait as the solution to the problem—how to get the ball into the basket—presents itself.” Curry shares this approach to his craft in a stylish collection that mixes life lessons with sharp photographs and archival images. His dad, Dell, played in the NBA for 16 years, and Curry learned much from his father and mother: “My parents were extremely strict about me and my little brother Seth not going to my pops’s games on school nights.” Curry’s mother, Sonya, who founded the Montessori elementary school that Curry attended in North Carolina, emphasized the importance not just of learning but of playing. Her influence helped Curry and his wife, Ayesha, create a nonprofit foundation: Eat. Learn. Play. He writes that “making reading fun is the key to unlocking a kid’s ability to be successful in their academic journeys.” The book also has valuable pointers for ballers—and those hoping to hit the court. “Plant those arches—knees bent behind those 10 toes pointing at the hoop, hips squared with your shoulders—and draw your power up so you explode off the ground and rise into your shot.” Sounds easy, right?
“Protect your passion,” writes an NBA star in this winning exploration of how we can succeed in life.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9780593597293
Page Count: 432
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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