An engaging, challenging, and relevant commentary on an ancient source of wisdom.
In this spiritual work, an influential rabbi analyzes the book of Proverbs through the lens of social justice.
Yanklowitz is the founder and head of Shamayim: Jewish Animal Advocacy and YATOM: The Jewish Foster and Adoption Network, and he frequently appears on lists of America’s most inspirational rabbis. With advanced degrees from Harvard and Columbia and as the author of almost two dozen books, he has an undisputed grasp of ancient Jewish thought and its contemporary applications. But he readily admits that this work, a commentary on the book of Proverbs, was “my most difficult one to write to date.” Moving chapter by chapter through Proverbs, the volume follows the predictable pattern of most Torah commentaries. It offers the original text in Hebrew side by side with an English translation and followed by editorial commentary by the author. Yanklowitz’s analysis comes in the form of 57 essays that center on themes related to social justice and personal application. While the book has a firm command of the ancient understandings of Proverbs and is accompanied by an impressive body of research reflected in the endnotes, it excels at disrupting the traditionalist impulses of religion. Readers are challenged to rebel against unjust systems of oppression, to always question authority, and to seek wisdom that transcends blind obedience to religious dogmas. And while the volume does not eschew traditional Jewish interpretations of Proverbs, it reads the texts “critically, with intellectual skepticism.” As such, the work grapples with occasional passages that deal with, for instance, archaic ideas related to gender. Given Proverbs’ lack of direct references to God, Yanklowitz convincingly argues that the biblical book “is accessible to a broad readership, believers and non-believers alike.” This commentary, despite its distinctly Jewish outlook, likewise has a broad appeal and should interest readers of varied religious backgrounds. Written in an accessible style and with a useful glossary for those unacquainted with Jewish terminology, the volume will also entice scholars, religious leaders, and lay readers. And while the essays can be a bit repetitive at times, this work nevertheless delivers another excellent commentary by a contemporary Jewish luminary.
An engaging, challenging, and relevant commentary on an ancient source of wisdom.Pub Date: June 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-88123-376-6
Page Count: 472
Publisher: Central Conference of American Rabbis Press
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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