Luminous reflections on bodies and souls in motion that pair lyrical writing with vibrant images.
Running isn’t just exercise but a profound spiritual discipline as well, according to this lavishly illustrated meditation.
Goldklang, a recreational runner and former track competitor, pens free-associative ruminations on running, framing the activity as an intensely physical pursuit that also connects us to the rhythms of the universe. His episodic, loose-limbed, meandering text includes many biographical snippets about significant historical runners from Pheidippides, the legendary ancient Greek whose sprint from Marathon to Athens inspired the modern race, to sub-four-minute-miler Roger Bannister and Ethiopian runner Abebe Bikila, who won gold at the 1960 Rome Olympics running the marathon barefoot. He also discusses less obvious choices, like folk singer Woody Guthrie—who didn’t run but did go walking that ribbon of highway—and astronaut Neil Armstrong, whose pioneering moon-hop symbolizes “the longest distance ever run: from Earth to Awe.” Goldklang peppers the pages with stentorian, all-caps slogans that mix motivation with metaphysics: “SPEED AND TIME ARE SUBJECTIVE. EFFORT AND DETERMINATION ARE NOT. YOU ARE WORTHY OF THIS EFFORT.” He sprinkles in short poems and longer sections of prose, which include passages on the sweat glands, springy tendons, and other adaptations that enable the human body to run so well, along with an account of his stint at a Tennessee inpatient facility, where he grappled with the abuse he suffered in childhood.
By turns playful and effusive, Goldklang’s musings trot down many a winding trail of curious lore and self-knowledge. His poetry is raptly attuned to the visceral sensations of running (“Sweat hit my lips, / Tasted the Salt”), and his prose evokes the physical rush of athleticism, which he conveys in vivid, kinetic prose. (“I lifted off my hips and surged forward, moving with a power I didn’t know I had. The last 300 meters burned down in pure bliss. There was no pain, no struggle, just a wildfire of boundless energy.”) There’s a pronounced mysticism in his thinking that lifts the solitary runner into an oceanic oneness of all being: “Running is a way of being heard by the universe. Moving on her ground connects us with every past generation that left their energy.” At his best, the author unites the biological and the spiritual in a seamless whole, a vision that stays rooted in the reality of a psyche enmeshed in and nourished by the body. (“I flashed through the hundreds of times these feet toed a starting line and rocked full force into the first left turn. All that heat, all that burn, just to bring forth this lesson: Running saved me. Not because it fixed me, but because it gave my brokenness something to do.”) The illustrations by Los Angeles–based artist and muralist Junker feature bold planes of color and repeated motifs of birds and flowers, sun and moon. Athletes are sometimes depicted in the style of archaic Greek vase paintings, their bunched muscles and straining sinews traced in stark lines; at other times they are Picasso-like figures with doughy bodies, lurching poses, and flat, depthless profiles. Junker’s strong, iconic style makes for a striking visual accompaniment to Goldklang’s words. Luminous reflections on bodies and souls in motion that pair lyrical writing with vibrant images.Pub Date: Dec. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9781646872176
Page Count: 190
Publisher: Ideapress Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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
SEEN & HEARD
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