A treat for the sports fanatic of the household.
In which two sports fans take a gonzo spin around the world to search for the meaning of it all.
Why do we love sports? Well, there’s the existential aspect: We need meaning in life, and sports provides it, at least for some. Then, as scriptwriter Schur and sportswriter Posnanski put it, “Life is lonely, and sports provide community.” What’s more, sports, at least in the authors’ case, allows them to go tearing off to see what other nuts are up to. They find them everywhere. Schur imagines Posnanski asking a random stranger how it is that he became a Bears fan, receiving the reply, “I live in a prismatic hell from which there is no escape.” On a happier note, the two head to London for the World Darts Championship, its besotted fans dressed as if it were Halloween, “if Halloween had been designed from drunken adult Brits.” And if Halloween were about bananas instead of pumpkins, one might add. As for Canada: Well, as one Canadian succinctly puts it, “Every fucking day in Canada is National Fucking Hockey Day.” There’s plenty of goofiness, but there are also some serious reflections on various facets of sports. Darts may not seem like much of a sport as such, but the televised championship is viewed by millions around the world, as are chess matches. An especially thoughtful touch comes from Posnanski, who ruminates on the “radio rhythm” of different sports, with baseball the ideal pace, just as it’s the ideal game, while radio-broadcast football is “loud and chaotic and emotional and just a little bit nonsensical.” The writers diverge on some points—Schur hates violence, so naturally Posnanski condemns him to watch pro wrestling in revenge for having been dispatched to a pickleball tourney. But they agree firmly and rightly on one essential point: “we both despise the Dallas Cowboys.”
A treat for the sports fanatic of the household.Pub Date: May 19, 2026
ISBN: 9798217045112
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
An overstuffed, enjoyable jaunt through the NFL’s recent past.
Four decades of football, as chronicled by a well-known sportswriter.
Longtime Sports Illustrated gridiron reporter King takes a maximalist approach, devoting one chapter to each year from 1984, when he started writing about the NFL, to 2023, the last season he covered the league full-time. This lengthy professional memoir features anecdotes and commentary, an argument-starting list of names for his “Mount Rushmore of Pro Football,” a crossword puzzle, and informative tidbits on tactics and playcalling, as well as profiles of singular players and warranted criticism of league bosses’ handling of player health and sports gambling. King skillfully charts the NFL’s inexorable growth. When he started, snail-mail newsletters were must-reads. In today’s media landscape, streaming networks have spent $4.3 billion to broadcast 58 games. As the author illustrates, Paul Tagliabue, a relatively unheralded league commissioner, engineered the year-round fan experience, with “tentpole events like a draft with more fanfare, free agency, and a new TV channel.” Polls showed that baseball and football were equally popular in the ’80s, but, by 2024, football had four times as many fans. Yet King’s kitchen-sink approach results in some bloat. Nobody yearns for a minute-by-minute rehash of the Cowboys’ 1991 draft or a rundown of the “quotes of 2002.” But amid the overabundance, there’s ample charm. In his best chapters, King catches up with guys he wrote about years ago. An 80-something Hall of Fame coach sketches Xs and Os on a notepad. A retired player known for his creative trash-talking shares tricks of the trade. In a powerful chapter, King visits a lab and looks at the damaged brain of a player he voted for in Hall of Fame balloting. This dovetails with King’s number-crunching on per-game hits sustained by players, important analysis as the league considers expanding its schedule.
An overstuffed, enjoyable jaunt through the NFL’s recent past.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781324123637
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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
SEEN & HEARD
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