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
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
Basketball fans will enjoy Pippen’s bird’s-eye view of some of the sport’s greatest contests.
The Chicago Bulls stalwart tells all—and then some.
Hall of Famer Pippen opens with a long complaint: Yes, he’s a legend, but he got short shrift in the ESPN documentary about Michael Jordan and the Bulls, The Last Dance. Given that Jordan emerges as someone not quite friend enough to qualify as a frenemy, even though teammates for many years, the maltreatment is understandable. This book, Pippen allows, is his retort to a man who “was determined to prove to the current generation of fans that he was larger-than-life during his day—and still larger than LeBron James, the player many consider his equal, if not superior.” Coming from a hardscrabble little town in Arkansas and playing for a small college, Pippen enjoyed an unlikely rise to NBA stardom. He played alongside and against some of the greats, of whom he writes appreciatively (even Jordan). Readers will gain insight into the lives of characters such as Dennis Rodman, who “possessed an unbelievable basketball IQ,” and into the behind-the-scenes work that led to the Bulls dynasty, which ended only because, Pippen charges, the team’s management was so inept. Looking back on his early years, Pippen advocates paying college athletes. “Don’t give me any of that holier-than-thou student-athlete nonsense,” he writes. “These young men—and women—are athletes first, not students, and make up the labor that generates fortunes for their schools. They are, for lack of a better term, slaves.” The author also writes evenhandedly of the world outside basketball: “No matter how many championships I have won, and millions I have earned, I never forget the color of my skin and that some people in this world hate me just because of that.” Overall, the memoir is closely observed and uncommonly modest, given Pippen’s many successes, and it moves as swiftly as a playoff game.
Basketball fans will enjoy Pippen’s bird’s-eye view of some of the sport’s greatest contests.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982165-19-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
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