A solid argument for judicial reform—and if not that, bypassing the Supreme Court whenever possible.
The insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, may have been the work of a mob, but robed judges stood behind it.
According to Douglas, a law professor and author of Vote for US, the Supreme Court’s decisions over the past decade have “contributed to the rise of anti-democracy forces animating our elections.” Some rulings support gerrymandered legislative districts; some defer election standards to state officials whose interest it is to keep those in power there; and some simply erode laws protecting voting rights. “It rules in incremental ways,” writes the author, “chopping away a little here, a little there.” The result is a constitutional guarantee undermined to the point of meaninglessness. When Georgia voters turned out in the 2021 runoff elections and put two Democrats in the Senate, the Republican legislature responded by slashing the number of ballot drop boxes placed in mostly Black precincts, a blatant exercise in voter suppression. Blandly stating that it’s up to the states to decide, the Court has disenfranchised millions of voters. This began longer than a decade ago, of course; Douglas repeatedly circles back to Bush v. Gore and the 2000 presidential election, when the Supreme Court held that a “recount would take too long,” placing the whim of the legislature over the will of the voters. “Essentially,” he adds, “the court’s approach means that state legislatures should have little oversight from the courts, regardless of whether it’s before or after an election.” The Court may have rebuffed many of Trump’s falsely premised lawsuits, but that’s no guarantee that it will intervene judicially the next time a state decides to float a slate of false electors—a scary thought that’s entirely in keeping with many of the Court’s recent decisions.
A solid argument for judicial reform—and if not that, bypassing the Supreme Court whenever possible.Pub Date: May 14, 2024
ISBN: 9780807010938
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 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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