A fascinating perspective on challenging subject matter.
A writer and academic explores how math can be used to understand and critique the world of politics.
“Math is a clarifying way of looking at the world,” Volić writes in his introduction; by introducing readers to this specific perspective, he hopes to lead them to a new view on the contentious topic of politics. The author explains that, for him, democracy is “a piece of civic infrastructure that runs on mathematics.” That idea forms the backbone of a university class he teaches on the topic that regularly outrages students as they realize the counterintuitive nature of many long-standing political systems. With this book, Volić aims to bring that classroom experience to a wider audience. He structures his detailed examination of math and politics by first analyzing voting, then issues of representation, finally providing an explanation of how all of his ideas came together using concrete examples of civic infrastructure, both historical and contemporary. Volić walks readers through the ins and outs of simple majorities and pluralities and lays out the basics of mathematic theorems—the pinnacles of mathematical knowledge—noting the difficulty of translating notions like the “best” voting system into mathematic language. Early on, Volić brings out one of his most salient and important arguments, detailing how many “convenient numbers” used in the world’s democracies are largely unjustified. His primary example is membership in the House of Representatives being fixed at 435 seats, but there are several other examples that similarly become infuriating when looked at objectively. The author provides numerous examples, from Eurovision protocols to the 2010 Oakland, California mayoral race, to illustrate the instant runoff system, which here receives ample attention and detailed explanations, forming a cornerstone of Volić’s recommendations. From there, the author moves on to perhaps the most enraging political processes of them all, discussing gerrymandering and the electoral college, walking readers through the fine points of everything wrong with a system that works against fair representation. (He also offers several examples of proportional representation in other countries outside the U.S.)
Volić’s book is rich with ideas and explanations, and he writes with an enthusiasm for his subject that is infectious. It’s easy to imagine the author in front of a classroom, leading the students to lightbulb-moment realizations while being humorous and approachable. His writing is calibrated to speak to the greatest number of people, not just college-level students or academics. Volić’s humor, in particular, renders even the most complicated sections accessible. “The rest of this chapter will be exasperating. Irritating,” he writes at one point; he even puts a winking spin on his footnotes, proclaiming, “If you don’t know what MAGA is, you’ve either spent the last seven or so years in a well or you’re reading this 150 years from the time it was written.” Despite the passionate prose, the numerous tables, laws, and theorems can start to blur together—the subject remains complicated and academic at its core. Happily, there is just enough of Volić’s voice—and his own story as an immigrant from Bosnia Herzegovina—to keep even the most math-averse reader pushing through the difficult sections, eager to hear more of his ideas.
A fascinating perspective on challenging subject matter.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780691248806
Page Count: 408
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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