A brief but significant book that should be in the hands of anyone concerned about the nation's political future.
A notable contribution to the debate about how to reduce the appeal of “pathological populisms” while holding out hope of success in doing so.
As a leading political scientist, professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, and former president of the American Political Science Association, Smith’s credentials are impressive. In his latest book, parts of which were presented as part of the Castle Lectures at Yale, he explores how illiberal nationalism can be fought and reconciled to more humane, positive, and optimistic views of human potential and collective existence. In a narrative wide in perspective and rich in context, Smith makes two main points. First, he makes a case for the central importance to a people’s understanding of themselves of the stories they tell about the nations, tribes, and other groups of which they’re members—their “peoplehood.” Regarding the second, which is Smith’s freshest contribution, he argues for the importance of the kinds of stories he believes to be the most effective in energizing and sustaining a population in generous solidarity with each other against the “conservative nationalist political movements and religious traditionalists” who cling to “core, essential identities” in a changing world. “The simple, familiar siren songs of populist nationalisms” should be countered by “the development of more positive, more egalitarian, and inclusive stories of national peoplehood.” What makes a good story of peoplehood? Smith argues that it must be “expressive of [a people’s] identities and interests as well as their ideals” and “resonant, respectful” and arranged to withstand change over time. He then proposes three strong candidates for fitting stories of American nationhood and comes down on the side of Lincoln’s version of the Declaration of Independence as the richest and most enduring.
A brief but significant book that should be in the hands of anyone concerned about the nation's political future.Pub Date: June 23, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-22939-4
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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
© 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.
