An informative and enlightening blend of sports history and women’s history.
A British writer and cycling enthusiast offers a global history of women cyclists while discussing the connection of cycling to feminist issues worldwide.
The concept for the bicycle can be traced back to a German inventor working in the early 1800s, but it wasn’t until 1885 that the first true ancestor to the modern bicycle emerged in Britain. In this well-researched, readable book, Ross shows how these “freedom-machine[s]” became intertwined with women’s emancipation and the feminist movement. In the first section of the four that comprise the book, the author examines how the rise of cycling coincided with the emergence of the Anglo-American “New Woman,” “feminists who…wanted to throw off the restrictive shackles imposed by late-Victorian patriarchy.” Women able to afford bicycles embraced them for the freedom of movement they offered. Some, like dress reform advocate Florence Wallace Pomeroy, campaigned for women’s cycling bloomers. But such women often found themselves at odds with social conventions that deemed cycling a menace to “femininity, grace and even fertility.” In the second section, Ross explores how minority females, along with those living in anti-feminist regimes worldwide, combat underrepresentation by creating cycling groups and teaching each other how to ride. She also shows how women like the “pre-Hollywood” Audrey Hepburn used bicycles during World War II to circulate “anti-Nazi propaganda.” The third section, about female cycling adventurers, features stories about intrepid individuals such as Elizabeth Robins Pennell and Dervla Murphy, who used their bicycles to travel Europe and the world. In the final section, Ross celebrates the largely unsung bicycling champions—e.g., Olympian Emma Pooley—who have fought, and continue to fight, sexism and lack of financial support for competitive female cyclists. Comprehensive and inclusive, the narrative shines the spotlight on a neglected history while making an impassioned plea for gender equality in cycling.
An informative and enlightening blend of sports history and women’s history.Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-08360-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Plume
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
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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