A mixed bag covering a great deal of territory.
A collection of essays on the problems that plague America’s food supply chain at every level.
This collection accompanies the documentary series Food, Inc. 2, sequel to Food, Inc., and several pieces cover the same ground as the previous book. The contributors focus on the corporatization of agriculture and the ruthlessness of the massive companies involved. Many small farmers find it difficult to earn a living, and exploitation is common across the entire supply chain, from the people who pick the vegetables to cooks, servers, and other restaurant staff. Several articles look at the unhealthiness of much of the food that is currently produced, and food journalist Larissa Zimberoff, author of Technically Food: Inside Silicon Valley’s Mission To Change What We Eat, has worrying things to say about lab-produced food. The problem with this book is that much of the information has been examined before, sometimes decades ago. Does anyone still think that highly processed foods are good for you? A number of writers cannot resist the temptation to take a swipe at Donald Trump, and Cory Booker’s article, “Politics on Your Plate,” reads like an advertisement for the Democratic Party. Similarly, the essay by Michiel Bakker, “From Food Services to Foodshots,” feels like a promotion for his employer, Google. In their analysis of agribusiness, some articles drift close to conspiracy-theory territory, and in some places there is a self-righteous, preachy tone. More interesting material includes an article on expanding the aquaculture sector and an essay that calls for improving financing options and access for sustainable farms. “The Four Bites,” social entrepreneur Christiana Musk’s exploration of plant-based quasi-meat, also raises intriguing possibilities. Readers who buy everything from Whole Foods will like this book; others may pass. Other contributors include Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser, and Leah Penniman.
A mixed bag covering a great deal of territory.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781541703575
Page Count: 336
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Sept. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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