A helpful playbook to counter declining membership.
Sladek outlines why and how associations must re-tool to be member-centric in this nonfiction guide.
According to the author, who has “volunteered and worked for, consulted with, and researched membership organizations for two decades,” these organizations, many of which have experienced declining membership for years, must take an obvious yet surprisingly overlooked strategic action: putting the needs and interests of their members first. In this book, Sladek highlights an organization that does this—the home services contractors association Nexstar Network—and discusses the ways an association can move toward the desired objective of making “at least 80 percent” of its work exclusively focused on its membership. Tactics include putting the word membershipinto staff titles to underscore their member-centric responsibilities; regularly surveying membership, including via quick polls and small-group meetings, to continuously tailor and refine programs and services; and engaging all generations of members, including putting younger members on boards and offering student memberships. The author also emphasizes the importance of the “EIOU test” when creating member benefits: Make them “Exclusive” to members; “Include” benefits in the price of dues; be accessible “Online” in order “to match the pace of the talent economy”; and address “Urgent” needs. At the end of each chapter, Sladek offers workbook-style sets of questions to assess current operations and map out next steps. The author builds on the warnings that she sounded in The End of Membership as We Know It (2011) in this new, self-described “wake up call” urging hidebound member associations to adapt to the times or risk extinction. Sladek provides ample demographic evidence to support her case, detailing how emerging digital-native generations have different criteria for joining and participating in associations that differ from those of generations past. Her discussion of the various dysfunctions that associations fall prey to (including toxic boards and excessive non-member-focused events) will be wince-inducing yet recognizable to many, with her mantra to “put members first” serving as an effective guiding principle to help drive this critical organizational transformation.
A helpful playbook to counter declining membership.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2023
ISBN: 9798886360295
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Authority Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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