An eye-opening and potentially mind-expanding read for runners and stoners alike, not to mention the culturally curious.
A journalist discovers running while high—and discovers he’s not the only one who enjoys it.
Readers may be surprised by the overlap between the running community and weed culture. In his nonfiction debut, investigative journalist Hesse, who has written extensively about marijuana news, upends numerous misconceptions about cannabis and well-being. After a lifelong antipathy toward sports, the author turned away from drinking and smoking (cigarettes) in favor of running and getting high. Weed helped him find the groove and pleasure of running, but when he signed up for his first marathon, he didn’t yet know about “the hand-in-glove relationship between pot and sports.” As he began to notice how many other runners ingested marijuana, his reporting instincts led him deep into medical research, the long history of global cannabis use, the criminalization and ongoing trend toward legalization in the U.S., and the retrograde treatment the drug receives from the governing bodies of the sports world. This last is key. One takeaway from the book is that athletes in all sports use cannabis in one form or another at extraordinary rates. NBA and NFL players have estimated cannabis use at above 80% of players despite the drug still being banned. The reasons for use are myriad, but of particular interest to runners may be the relationship between the runner’s high and marijuana high. The cannabinoids we ingest in drug form are so chemically similar to the endocannabinoids our bodies naturally produce when running that for many runners, there is a kind of experiential convergence when the two practices are combined. To be sure, this is a work of advocacy, but—jokes aside—it’s a sober one. Hesse is circumspect in his enthusiasm, reminding readers that he’s “just a guy who likes to get stoned and run."
An eye-opening and potentially mind-expanding read for runners and stoners alike, not to mention the culturally curious.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-19117-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
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
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