A knowledgeable, sobering assessment of one of the most consequential geopolitical situations in the world.
A grim analysis of the “new order of three great powers.”
It’s fittingly Orwellian that the three great powers today roughly correspond to the prophesy of 1984—namely, the U.S., Russia, and China. The U.S. and Russia are in more or less direct conflict today, writes CNN national security correspondent Sciutto, author of The Madman Theory and The Shadow War, in Ukraine. China is watching carefully, notes the author, as it refines plans for a blitzkrieg war on Taiwan “while the world was preoccupied elsewhere.” Taiwanese military planners see the war in Ukraine as similar to their own, though in at least some sense they’re better equipped to defend their territory. As the author notes, military doctrine holds that an attacker needs to outnumber a defender by three to one, yet Ukraine’s costly counteroffensive has been close to parity, which explains what now appears to be an unbreakable stalemate. The conflict in Ukraine has had an immediate effect in reinvigorating NATO and making it more relevant, “reoriented…to its original mission, defending Europe against Russia and, now, a second strategic adversary in China.” Ukraine has done a good job of bleeding Russia’s army nearly dry, but that does nothing to diminish Russian naval and nuclear power, the former being exerted vigorously in the Arctic, the latter a constant looming threat. Another variable is the continued presence of Trump on the scene, a man who represents Sciutto’s observation that “today’s world is as rich in accommodationists as the world of the late 1930s.” Cleareyed without sensationalism, Sciutto’s text closes with the suggestion that China can be seen as the larger long-term threat and that dealing with Beijing will require clear negotiations on areas of both competition (semiconductors) and cooperation (climate change).
A knowledgeable, sobering assessment of one of the most consequential geopolitical situations in the world.Pub Date: March 12, 2024
ISBN: 978-0593474136
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2024
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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