For readers seeking support for their sports-watching habits.
The author of Real Food/Fake Food leads a book-length cheer for sports fans.
That so many of us care—often intensely—about the outcome of games played by people we don’t know is a decidedly good thing, writes journalist Olmsted in this compelling if contrived effort. Among his winning arguments: Sports fandom offers mental health benefits, especially a sense of belonging. To be a fan is to experience continual community. Also, watching and discussing sports can dissipate societal tensions; barrier-breaking athletes like Jackie Robinson and Billie Jean King changed not just their sports, but also the people who watched them play. The author is less convincing when he suggests that watching sports promotes physical health. In a largely anecdotal line of inquiry, Olmsted doesn’t adequately address the obesity epidemic that has coincided with the increasing ubiquity of sports fandom. Throughout the book, the author uses a foil in the form of a conversation with a doctor friend. This approach, in addition to ample use of pull quotes, creates a narrative that never becomes dense despite Olmsted’s reliance on academic studies. However, the conversation feels fabricated, and the author is unlikely to make fans out of nonfans. Given the considerable human and monetary capital consumed by sports, an examination of the watchers is certainly worthwhile. Olmsted’s take could have been strengthened with further exploration of what’s lost when people spend time buried in statistics or scrutinizing the fourth receiver on their fantasy football teams. While many readers will agree about the positive effect that comes from bonding with complete strangers over our favorite teams, is our obsession with sports one of the reasons we don’t know our neighbors as well as we should? Die-hard sports fans will find some of the author’s stories entertaining, but the sociological analysis could have been stronger.
For readers seeking support for their sports-watching habits.Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-61620-846-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
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
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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