Hopeful and enlightening commentary on the future of the food industry.
An examination of the problems and future of America’s broken food system.
Through a series of essays, market researcher and author Underhill, the author of Why We Buy and Call of the Mall, takes us on an eye-opening journey. According to the author, the system is broken, and technology is largely responsible. Today, technology has “turned the things we eat and drink into commercial products to be engineered, manufactured, and marketed like tires or toothpaste….Once, it was the scarcity of food that threatened our lives; today, it’s the abundance.” As the author notes, younger Americans may never realize that fruits and vegetables have specific growing seasons, as they are now available for purchase nearly anywhere and year-round. In the past few years, Americans’ shopping habits have changed significantly. Intensified by the Covid-19 pandemic, shoppers have increasingly turned to online outlets for their groceries and other needs. Due to issues related to trust and transparency in the production of food, as well as environmental and ethical concerns, other consumers have turned increasingly to local producers. With a witty, conversational tone, Underhill leads readers on a trip through various aspects of the food industry to demonstrate the ways in which changes in consumer behavior, as well as production concerns, are being addressed. He explores the layout of a typical supermarket and chronicles his tour of a farmers market in New York City as well the headquarters of a popular supercenter. Underhill is not all doom-and-gloom regarding technology’s impact. He points out certain developments, such as innovations in cannabis growing, that are being used to address climate change and the nation’s growing population. The author also recounts his interviews with farmers, members of the media, and industry experts, all of whom provide specific insights about the topic.
Hopeful and enlightening commentary on the future of the food industry.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982127-09-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 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
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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