The subtlety of Nelson's analysis and energy of her prose refresh the mind and spirit.
A top cultural critic plucks the concept of freedom away from right-wing sloganeers and explores its operation in current artistic and political conversations.
Containing far less memoir material than her much-loved The Argonauts (2015), Nelson's latest is more purely a work of criticism. In the first section, "Art Song," the author analyzes recent blowups related to cultural appropriation, "a discourse about how and when certain transgressions in art should be 'called out' and 'held accountable,' with the twist that now the so-called left is often cast—rightly or wrongly—in the repressive, punitive position." The author connects our exhaustion with our addiction to the "attention economy"—our 24/7 availability to 3.4 billion people using social media—to the dilemma she labels "I Care/I Can't." In the second section, "The Ballad of Sexual Optimism," Nelson teases out complexities and effects of the #MeToo movement in the context of the current fate of "sex positivity." She decries the conflict between different generations of thinkers and activists, “a totalizing script of intergenerational warfare, in which WE were brave, impressive adults seeking (and finding) pleasure and liberation, whereas YOU are pitiable, cowardly children obsessed with safety and trauma." The author also examines Monica Lewinsky's revisions of her personal history and Pema Chödrön's comments on the sexual rapacity of Trungpa Rinpoche. "Drug Fugue" analyzes intriguing texts, many not widely known, about intoxication and addiction. To open the final section, “Riding the Blinds,” Nelson considers her son's love for trains in the context of apocalyptic climate change. Acknowledging that many find the topic of global warming "too paralyzing, too sad, too frightening, too unimaginable," she compares our situation to that of hobos "riding the blinds"—hiding between cars, unable to see where they are headed. Still, she recommends we "love all the misery and freedom of living and, as best we can, not mind dying."
The subtlety of Nelson's analysis and energy of her prose refresh the mind and spirit.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64445-062-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
PERSPECTIVES
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
