A fiery synopsis of a formative period for American masculinity.
A cultural critic traces a nebulous redefinition of masculinity to the last decades of the 20th century.
In her new work, Crispin’s tools of critique are the erotic thrillers in which Michael Douglas starred in the 1980s and ’90s. The characters he played during this time, the author suggests, all reflect a “new masculinity” trying to find purchase in the wake of not only feminism’s second and third waves, but also shifts to America’s global position at the end of the Cold War. Women had achieved, even if imperfectly, new freedoms and had built resourceful networks of community and advocacy to propel themselves from patriarchy’s grip. Men, however, floundered in the face of perceived disempowerment. Failing to discern a new model of masculinity in their changing world, they become narrowly—even dangerously—reactive, shaping manliness into something marked by paranoid outrage, monetary greed, and cruel individualism. This is a niche period, both for Michael Douglas as a celebrity—his work after the turn of the century is only barely covered in the text, with some films not mentioned at all—and for the creation of a post-patriarchal society. The Douglas films offer examples as touchpoints for the author to discuss stereotypes like midlife crisis and nostalgic nationalism, as well as upheavals like no-fault divorce and the savings and loan banking crisis, all of which give way to the confusion, denial, and ultimately defensiveness and grievance that fuel a widespread conversation about how “men are failing to thrive” today. The author’s preoccupation with Douglas’ portrayals often distracts from rather than reinforces her argument, which can itself be winding and overgeneralized. Nevertheless, Crispin’s adept cultural synthesis is delivered with amusing snark and an undertone of increasing anxiety, pontifical concern, and moral urgency designed to confront the current moment.
A fiery synopsis of a formative period for American masculinity.Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9780593317624
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
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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